WHS Library InfoTech Team Nov-Dec 2023 Newsletter |
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Hello again, and thanks for checking out our newsletter! Read on to get information about library and technology resources, recommendations of ebooks and audiobooks, access to new databases, and more. Check it out! Please let us know how we can help, or just stop by to say hello. |
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In case you haven't heard, Artificial Intelligence has arrived in schools and is here to stay. We believe it's time to embrace this technology and learn the best practices available. The webpage below has myriad resources for teachers to use right now. Let us know if you'd like to learn more about AI! |
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Did you know...? We're finding that many staff members aren't aware of some of the resources we offer, so this is a new section we've added. |
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Did you know that we have Class Guides, Tools, and How-Tos? There are myriad resources in this section of the library website. Class Guides are web pages or websites that we've created to help students complete lessons or projects with library resources. Click on the dropdown arrow to explore the different content areas. Tools are web pages that contain resources in the areas of artificial intelligence, copyright, and statistics. How-to web pages offer guidance in MLA format, citations, note-taking, and more!
Check them out! |
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Did you know that we have a Staff Book Club? If you love to read and chat about books, join us! We select a book pairing from the list (linked in the image above) and meet every six weeks or so to discuss them. There is always one fiction and one non-fiction selection; read one or both! Keep an eye on the Teacher Google Calendar for dates and times of when we meet. |
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Artificial Intelligence Tool of the Month |
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"School AI is a free tool that allows your students to have safe, monitored interactions with AI learning activities. In short, here is how School AI works: As a teacher, you set up a free account for yourself. Next, you select a premade AI experience or create one of your own. You then share the invite link with the students so they can participate in the AI activity. Note: Students do not sign in or get an account. While the students engage in the activity, you can monitor their interactions. At the end of the activity, the AI summarizes the students' interactions so you can identify learning, needs, interests, and more.
Some of the AI experiences include... Historic Figures Choose from a wide range of historic figures for your students to chat with. Or create your own chatbot with a historical figure of your choice. The chatbot will proactively share interesting facts about the person, while also inviting students to ask their own questions. You have access to all chat sessions, allowing you to monitor student activity.
Book Explorer In this interactive activity, students will dive into the world of the book of your choosing. Or create your own chatbot with a book of your choice. They will use AI to discuss themes of the book, learn about the author, and engage in knowledgeable discussions.
Career Exploration Choose a career you want your students to explore. Or create your own chatbot with a career of your choice. The chatbot will proactively share interesting facts about the career, while also inviting students to ask their own questions. You have access to all chat sessions, allowing you to monitor student activity.
AND SO MUCH MORE!!! Click on the image above to access SchoolAI. Click on the button below to see examples of how it can be used in the classroom. |
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New Database! Issues & Controversies |
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"Featuring a dynamic design and a wealth of features, Issues & Controversies helps researchers understand today’s crucial issues by exploring hundreds of hot topics in politics, government, business, society, education, and popular culture. Our "Issue and Article" pages make it simple to see all of the available content in one place; thousands of editorials and opinions from renowned newspaper sources via NewsEdge keep researchers on top of trending topics; and our enhanced navigation and search results and improved organization and taxonomy give users an intuitive and user-friendly research experience. Updated weekly, with an extensive backfile, Issues & Controversies offers in-depth articles—each presenting both sides of an issue clearly, coherently, and without bias—made to inspire thought-provoking debates. Its straightforward presentation of the key facts, arguments, history, and current context of today’s most important and timely issues makes the database an ideal resource for research papers, debate preparation, and persuasive writing assignments. The articles are written by our own expert writers and editors, and each article includes a full range of supporting materials." |
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Tech Resource Digital Citizenship Week |
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Let AI be your best friend when you just can't get those sub plans completed at 5am. Take a look at this resource to help you get sub plans done in under 15 minutes! Ditch Summit starts Monday Dec 11! Sign up using this link and get access to presentations and resources about AI, PBL, and teaching with technology. For more information, click here. 15 Days of Tech - reminder to check this resource out! Updated each day with a new technology tool to try for your own classrooms! Reach out if you want more information about a tool to use with students. Click on the button below to schedule an appointment with Carly Minor, our technology integrator. |
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Ebook to Borrow Educated by Tara Westover |
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"Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer, she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter, she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent. ... Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it." ~Goodreads Available on cloudLibrary. Log in with your Personal ID found in Infinite Campus. Click on the image above to access the ebook from cloudLibrary. Click on the button below to read a book review. |
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Audiobook to Borrow The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher |
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"The last book from beloved Hollywood icon Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist is an intimate, hilarious, and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time, the first Star Wars movie. When Carrie Fisher discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved--plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Before her passing, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon was indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a teenager with an all-consuming crush on her costar, Harrison Ford. With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher's intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time--and what developed behind the scenes. Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into one of Hollywood's most beloved stars." ~Goodreads Available on cloudLibrary. Log in with your Personal ID found in Infinite Campus. Click on the image above to access the audiobook. Click on the button below to read a book review. |
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eMagazine to Borrow The Week |
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"The best of U.S. & international media in one magazine, The Week brings the most relevant and important news from more than 200 trusted local and global sources to over 300,000 readers in one concise, informative, and entertaining read. We provide all the facts you need to both confidently reflect on the last seven days and prepare for what’s coming next. The Week threads all sides of an argument together to offer a balanced perspective, because we understand that there are more than two sides to every story. Free from influence and agenda, the magazine allows you to cut through the noise of the media and find clarity at a time it’s never been more important." Sora now has digital magazines! Log in to the site by selecting Windham/Raymond School District RSU 14. There, you will find a selection of magazines to borrow, ranging from children's to adult levels. All titles are available all of the time. No waiting! Click on the image above to access The Week magazine. Click on the button below to access the Sora database of magazines, ebooks, and audiobooks. Select Windham/Raymond School District and log in with Google. |
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ComicsPlus Nate el Grande ¡Hola! by Lincoln Peirce |
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"Nate Wright is the 11-year-old star of New York Times bestselling author Lincoln Peirce's wildly popular comic strip Big Nate, which debuted in 1991. On top of his stardom, Nate is a professional pest to school principals, a chess prodigy, and a self-described genius. And when his hilarious wisecracks and pranks get him in trouble, Nate's winning personality and charming over-confidence will delight and entertain readers. ¡Diga hola al aspirante a caricaturista, Nate Wright! Con once años de edad, Nate está en el sexto grado, y tiene el récord por la cantidad de detenciones mas altas en la historia de la escuela. Él es la estrella de Big Nate, la tira cómica popular por Lincoln Peirce, que debutó en 1991. Además de ser una estrella, Nate es una molestia profesional para los directores de la escuela, un prodigio del ajedrez, y un genio autoproclamado. Y cuando sus bromas hilarantes lo meten en problemas, su personalidad encantadora junto con su exceso de confianza, llegara a encantar y entretener a los lectores." ~Amazon "Comics Plus is a digital platform offering thousands of digital comics, graphic novels, and manga to readers, exclusively through school, public, and academic libraries. It is powered by LibraryPass." ~ComicsPlus Check it out! Click on the image above to access the library website. To get to Comics Plus, hover over "Digital Books and Magazines" and click on "Comics Plus." Sign up to create an account. |
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Our next Book Club is on Monday, December 18th, 2023, at 2:10 in the library. The pair of books we're discussing is The Manningtree Witches by A. K. Blakemore and In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial by Mona Chollet. We hope to see some new faces and looking forward to seeing familiar ones, too! Join us! |
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| | Click on the image above to order from Print: A Bookstore! "Wolf Hall meets The Favourite in this beguiling debut novel that brilliantly brings to life the residents of a small English town in the grip of the seventeenth-century witch trials and the young woman tasked with saving them all from themselves. This is an intimate portrait of a clever if unworldly heroine who slides from amused observation of the 'moribund carnival atmosphere' in the household of a 'possessed' child to nervous uncertainty about the part in the proceedings played by her adored tutor to utter despair as a wagon carts her off to prison." —Alida Becker, The New York Times Book Review England, 1643. Puritanical fervor has gripped the nation. And in Manningtree, a town depleted of men since the wars began, the hot terror of damnation burns in the hearts of women left to their own devices. Rebecca West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only occasionally by her infatuation with the handsome young clerk John Edes. But then a newcomer, who identifies himself as the Witchfinder General, arrives. A mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about what the women on the margins of this diminished community are up to. Dangerous rumors of covens, pacts, and bodily wants have begun to hang over women like Rebecca—and the future is as frightening as it is thrilling. Brimming with contemporary energy and resonance, The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust, and betrayal run amok as a nation's arrogant male institutions start to realize that the very people they've suppressed for so long may be about to rise up and claim their freedom." ~Goodreads | | |
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| | Click on the image above to order from Print: A Bookstore! "Mona Chollet's In Defense of Witches is a celebration by an acclaimed French feminist of the witch as a symbol of female rebellion and independence in the face of misogyny and persecution. Centuries after the infamous witch hunts that swept through Europe and America, witches continue to hold a unique fascination as fairy tale villains, practitioners of pagan religion, as well as feminist icons. Witches are both the ultimate victim and the stubborn, elusive rebel. But who were the women who were accused and often killed for witchcraft? What types of women have centuries of terror censored, eliminated, and repressed? Celebrated feminist writer Mona Chollet explores three types of women who were accused of witchcraft and the independent woman, since widows and celibates were particularly targeted; the childless woman, since the time of the hunts marked the end of tolerance for those who claimed to control their fertility; and the elderly woman, who has always been an object of at best, pity, and at worst, horror. Examining modern society, Chollet concludes that these women continue to be harrassed and oppressed. Rather than being a brief moment in history, the persecution of witches is an example of society’s seemingly eternal misogyny, while women today are direct descendants to those who were hunted down and killed for their thoughts and actions. With fiery prose and arguments that range from the scholarly to the cultural, In Defense of Witches seeks to unite the mythic image of the witch with modern women who live their lives on their own terms." ~Goodreads | | |
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