Our New EBSCO Subscriptions

For the 2013-2014 school year, we significantly increased the number of nonfiction books available to our students by adding a subscription to the EBSCO eBook High School Collection database, giving us access to approximately 7,000 simultaneous use ebooks. Last week, we upgraded our subscription to EBSCO’s eBook Academic Collection. This is BIG news, since it increases our available ebooks to more than 130,000 and allows our students to take advantage of the kind of collection normally only available to university students. Most of the holdings in this collection are nonfiction. A huge advantage of these ebooks is that they can be used simultaneously by an unlimited number of readers; we aren’t restricted to one reader at a time.

In addition, we added EBSCO’s Academic Search Premier database, which provides us with full-text access to articles in approximately 4,600 academic journals. Together, these new subscriptions provide excellent support for Common Core across the curriculum. They also allow students to read about areas of personal interest to them, learning what they want to learn. When students get to explore their own personal interests, they are more engaged and learn more. The link to our subscription is posted on the library website Databases and ebooks page and the various subject pathfinders. Here is a direct link. The ebooks will also soon be searchable through our library catalog. Please contact me or come by the library for a handout to get the username and password for these great new resources.

I’d like to extend special thanks to Wayne Knutson and Bill Fauver for helping me to review these resources over the summer, and to our District Educational Services Department for providing a portion of the funding.

We also, of course, need print books. Here’s a display of recently-arrived nonfiction print books, many of which were funded by the PTSA to support Common Core:

Finishing Freshman Orientations

During the last two weeks, I completed the final 9th grade orientations, hosting Ms. Wiseman and Ms. Wachell’s classes for a second day of orientation, and Mr. Zeoli and Ms. Mullen’s classes for day 1 and day 2. Here’s our display of printouts of some of the great slides that students created sharing their passions and a book they found related to these interests:

(You’ll have to come visit the library for a better view of these!) I look forward to seeing all of the Freshmen often when they visit on their own and with their classes for upcoming research projects and book selection.

Introducing Google Apps for Education and Google Classroom

As part of the Freshman orientations this year, I have been introducing students to their district Google Apps for Education (GAFE) accounts and to Google Classroom. The latter is a new Google application just introduced in September. It can make running a paperless classroom and using Google Drive features much easier for teachers and students. It allows teachers to share assignments and announcements with students, conduct online discussions, and have students submit work as Google Docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and more, and have it automatically organized in folders. For students, having a district GAFE account means that they can keep their school files and emails separate from any personal items and that teachers can easily know their students’ emails for sharing materials, contacting them, and offering comments and feedback on work.

I have also started sharing information about the benefits of using GAFE accounts and Google Classroom with Mira Costa teachers this fall. Last week, Michael Hayden brought his Music Appreciation class to the library to have me help them access their GAFE accounts and join a Google Classroom. Now, the class will be able to do all its assignments paperlessly! I look forward to helping more teachers and classes take advantage of these tools.

Mira Costa Hall of Fame

On October 3 Mira Costa hosted its third annual Hall of Fame. The breakfast and lunch for the distinguished alumni was held in the library. What an amazing group of alumni we had here! It included Noreen Harris Baer, Huntley Castner, Lance Dixon, Jim Lindbert, Jeff Rohrer, Marianne Selek Wibberley, and Cormac Wibberley.

Señora Rossell’s AP Spanish Class Blogging Project

Anita Rossell’s class visited the library on September 30 and October 1 to begin this year’s blogging project. This project warrants a posting on its own. So, please stand by for that!