Heritage High School Language and Comp Pilot

Pilot at Heritage!

The AP Language and Composition classes at Heritage High School in Vancouver, WA were starting their "synthesis" assignments and invited yolink to participate. Their project consisted of researching controversial topics and then writing an opinion paper. Some of the topics included, climate change, international adoption, plastic surgery, and cell phone laws in schools.

The project began with a discovery of topic ideas and also a discussion of how to find better sources online. Students learned Google search tricks to help them easily find credible sources as well as how to use yolink not only with Google but in their school library online databases. Our integrations with EasyBib and Google Docs were also valuable. Mrs. Zadeh and Mrs. Fryer kept reminding students to "use their tools" (referring to EasyBib and Google Docs) and "remember to use yolink because it researches for you!"

Image from: http://www.evergreenps.org/SCHOOLINFO/Pages/SchoolDetails.aspx?sn=Heritage
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Love this Article

Short blog post today because I've found something worth reading over: we're loving this article by Donald J. Leu Jr. at UConn.
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Marshall Elementary Pilot

Marshall Elementary in Vancouver, Washington

5^th grade social studies students from Marshall Elementary were learning about the Treaty of Paris, Declaration of Independence, Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre. 4 events that are all so different and there’s so much to know!

The goal of the day was to learn how to find credible resources online and to use yolink to find the information within those sources. Students learned syntax tricks to help them easily find credible sources as well as learning how to use yolink in their school library online databases.

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Wall Street Portfolio Manager Uses yolink

Students and researchers of all ages are using yolink to search online and everyone is facing the same problems. In this age of exponentially growing information, students are now finding ways to quickly find the valuable information and send it to others on their personal learning networks. Here’s one example of how a Wall Street portfolio manager is using yolink with Google Docs integration to collaborate on his Personal Learning Network:

‘I do a lot of research on the education industry, particularly the emerging online segment. Recently, I was sent a 350 page report which covered mostly the legacy portion of the industry, but about 5% of the report covered the online segment. With yolink, searching in the “text” mode for the keyword “online”, 20 paragraphs were presented in the yolink sidebar. Next, using yolink’s new click box selection function, I put all these paragraphs in a Google Docs file titled,”schools, online”, which happens to be my 89th Google Doc folder. Lastly, through the Google Docs “share” function, I then emailed the folder to my 5 research colleagues. All this in under 60 seconds.’

After reviewing his search process, I noted that the information to sort through shrank from 356 pages to 53. A little more manageable, right?


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Cherry Creek Pilots

Last week, yolink team members flew out to sunny and snowy Colorado to meet with staff, administrators, librarians and students to teach them about optimizing their search and finding information faster.

We worked with all different ages, learning types and schools. Students were studying everything from current events to online coding. We used our information literacy curriculum to show students and teachers how to better search online and how to use yolink. Now they can find credible information and write their paper faster.

Everyone also loved our free integration with EasyBib!

A yolink engineer came out as well! He talked about how yolink was created and about being an engineer in today’s world. Intro and advanced computer science students learned about what it takes to be an engineer and where they should start.

Quote of the week: "This is the most valuable thing they've [teachers] taught us all year! Yolink and EasyBib will save me so much time." - Anonymous 10th grade honor student

Overland High School - Aurora, CO

Horizon Middle Schoolers were beginning research projects as part of their advanced learners program. Students learned search skills to begin their "Night of the Notables" project, current events podcast and Science Olympiad.

Michelyne Gray is now ready to teach all of her colleagues how to use yolink in the classroom and everyone was so excited to hear about our integration with EasyBib!

Eagle Crest High School was kind enough to let us be a part of their pep rally in exchange for our knowledge of information literacy. Go Raptors!

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Vancouver School District

Thank you librarians! Yolink team members presented at a staff development meeting in the Vancouver School District in Washington State. The presentation and discussion focused on the topic that was in my last posting, information literacy! With so much information available on the internet, how can students sort through it all and find valuable information?

Some of the teachers' struggles were:
1. Students don't know how to maximize the search engine
2. Students' use search engines instead of our subscription databases because they feel overwhelmed. How can we show students the tools to finding credible sources online?
3. My students effectively know how to type in many key words to narrow down their searches but the search engines bring back results with only some of their keywords, not all of them.

Some of the benefits they saw and learned:
1. Using yolink text search can help my students look for ideas and concepts because the words are in close proximity to each other in the article or ebook
2. Syntax can help my students find credible sources outside of databases
3. yolink can help my students find very specific information while saving clicks

We participate in staff development meetings very often. If this is something that you want to set up, let us know! We can do an online meeting or in person.
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Lack of Resources?

I was inspired the other day by something Alan November wrote on his twitter. He referred to the library of congress and the vast amount of resources available. Their website notes that "the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with nearly 142 million items on approximately 650 miles of bookshelves". The problem here is not that we're lacking resources or information, its how do we find what we want? How can we as educators teach our students to find the most valuable information when they're bombarded with so much that is mediocre?
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