Good afternoon, Registration is currently open for the 2017 Congressional App Challenge. The Congressional App Challenge is held in Congressional districts nation-wide to encourage student participation in STEM fields. The first place winners from each Congressional district will be invited to attend the House of Code event in Washington D.C. to view their app in an exhibit at the U.S. Capitol. Students entering the competition must create and exhibit a software application for mobile, tablet, or computer devices on a platform of their choice. Students may participate individually, or in teams of up to four members. Along with the App, students must submit a video of their app and what they learned through the competition process on the CongressionalAppChallenge.us website by 11:00am (CTS) on November 1, 2017. While registration is open until November 1, students are encouraged to sign up and register as soon as possible so that our office may provide them with additional information and deadline reminders. For more information about the challenge rules and registration, please visit www.CongressionalAppChallenge.us. If you or your students have any questions about the competition, please feel free to contact me at Emma.Buttke@mail.house.gov or 920-301-4500. Thank you, Emma Emma Buttke Constituent Services Representative Congressman Mike Gallagher (WI-08) Office: (920) 301-4500 | Fax: (920) 301-3492
Computer Science Learning: Closing the Gap: Rural and Small-Town School Districts This special brief from our Google-Gallup study dives into the opportunities and challenges for rural and small-town communities. Based on nationally representative surveys from 2015-16, we found:
Students from rural/small-town schools are just as likely as other students to see CS as important for their future careers, including 86% who believe they may have a job needing computer science. Rural/small-town parents and principals also highly value CS, with 83% of parents and 64% of principals saying that offering CS is just as or more important than required courses. Rural/small-town students are less likely to have access to CS classes and clubs at school compared to suburban students, and their parents are less likely to know of CS opportunities outside of school. Rural/small-town principals are less likely to prioritize CS, compared to large-city or suburban principals. Read the report at https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/computer-science-learning-closing-the-gap-rural-small-town-brief.pdf Starting next Monday, August 28th, Wisconsin's Digital Library will link to Libby instead of the existing OverDrive app. It will look similar to this site: https://kcls.overdrive.com/. There will be a banner graphic and the app links at the bottom will point to Libby.
We have aggregated all the resources we have collected and created on this page to help you support Libby users: https://www.wplc.info/libbyintro. Andrea Coffin, WiLS What is a Summit? A Google for Education Summit is an open 1-2 day event primarily focused on Google Apps for Education, but can also cover additional Google products like Google Earth, YouTube for Schools, Google Search, etc. These are events organized by members of the Google Apps for Education community for members of the community. Want to plan a Summit featuring Google for Education? Here's how to get started:
Click here for more information and a list of the 2017 events.
Laura Solomon, the Library Services Manager for the Ohio Public Library Information Network, is the morning speaker for this year's Tech Days. The workshop will be held on September 12 from 9 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. at the Fitchburg Public Library and registration is now open. Choose from six different breakout sessions for the afternoon including STEM Programming with No Budget, #Hashtag: Promoting Your Library through Social Media, and our own Craig Ellefson and Tamara Ramski talking about the Digitization Kits.
If you're not attending the Wisconsin Library Association Conference, check out this opportunity. On October 18, Library Journal and School Library Journal are hosting their 8th annual FREE TechKnowledge (formerly the Digital Shift) Virtual Conference. This year's theme is Creating Equity Through Technology. Among this year's presenters are Jim Neal, the President of the American Library Association. If you are attending the Wisconsin Library Association Conference* (and I really hope you do!), we are pleased to have some great technology programs for you including a keynote from Linda Liukas, a Finnish computer programmer and children's author, and Jessamyn West, library technologist, will be the WLTF luncheon speaker on Thursday. Registration will be open soon! Also in October, the iSchool at UW Madison has a new course called 25 Free Tools for Librarians* that sounds awesome. Among the tools that will be covered are Wunderlist, Todo, Notability, Dragon, Convertible, Instapaper, and Kahoot. If I weren't otherwise occupied in October, I'd be signing up for this one! Happy Learning! * SCLS Member public libraries may use CE Grant funds to attend. Yesterday, at the WiLSWorld conference in Madison, a presenter handed out cards for Wisc-Online. The tag line reads, By teachers. For students. Get unstuck. The back of the card says:
Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, & Math + more Play games and study with friends Build and share your own games Help at the touch of your fingertips I went to the site and found a treasure trove of educational videos, some with quizzes! This would be a great resource for anyone wanting to brush up on their knowledge of a specific subject, gain some insight into a certain career, and/or get help with homework. Check it out: https://www.wisc-online.com/ The Microsoft store has lots of add-ins to boost creativity and productivity within their Office products. Many are free and can be very useful tools, like:
- Speech recognition and dictation - Language translation - Emojis - Starbucks e-gift cards - Document signing - Charts and diagrams Follow this link (https://store.office.com/en-us/appshome.aspx?ui=enstore.office.com/en-us/appshome.aspx?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US-US&rs=en-US&ad=US) to store and browse around all your options. They can be sorted by product (Word, Excel, etc.) or category. The WPLC is pleased to announce the addition of 25 always-available audiobook titles from Blackstone Audio in Wisconsin's Digital Library. These titles were purchased by the WPLC Selection Committee on June 30th and added to the collection on July 3rd. On that day, the purchase immediately filled 1625 holds. In just one week, the titles have circulated 5,939 times.
The titles are easily accessible through a curated collection titled "No Wait Audio!" at https://wplc.overdrive.com/collection/98873. We will be reviewing the possibility of additional packages like this in the future. For any questions, please contact Sara Gold at sgold@wils.org. Non-secure HTTP In recent months, you may have noticed browser icons and messages like these... What's going on?
Earlier this year, certain browsers began to warn users when they visit a login page that doesn't use https. Https is a secure version of the http protocol used to pass information between websites and browsers and is commonly used by websites passing usernames/passwords, credit card information, and other sensitive information. There is a big push to implement https on all websites to help keep users' browsing and personal data secure. Not all websites currently use https, and it will take time to convert them. You may have already noticed some websites managed by SCLS have not yet made the jump, but some like LINKcat and the ecommerce payment website DO provide secure connections. In upcoming months, we will be working on converting more of the SCLS-managed sites. In the meantime, remember: never (NEVER!) enter your credit card, social security number, bank information, or other super-sensitive information on a website that is NOT https. ALL banking, tax, financial, and retail sites should provide https for security. Want to know a little more about https and secure websites? Take a look at this short but informative 3-minute CommonCraft video! Additional reading A short tutorial on your browser's security features: http://www.gcflearnfree.org/internetsafety/your-browsers-security-features/1/ Mozilla's and Google's blog posts about https: In June of 2017, OverDrive announced a broader release of their updated mobile app for Wisconsin's Digital Library called Libby. This app has been designed specifically to streamline and simplify the OverDrive mobile user experience, especially for new users. Libby will be added to Wisconsin's Digital Library in August as the preferred app for new users and following that, OverDrive will begin to encourage users of the existing app to switch to Libby. As of June 2017, there is no definitive timeline for when the current app will be discontinued and developments about Libby will be shared to the WPLC blog and to the WPLC Announcements List.
Libby is currently available for download in the app stores for iOS(link is external), Android(link is external), and Kindle Tablets(link is external). In order to prepare our frontline OverDrive support team of librarians across the state, we encourage you to try the app for yourself. We have also put together some resources to help you support the app for those early adopters who may have questions. This documentation will be rolled into the OverDrive support documentation as we know more about the app and how to best support it. About Libby: https://meet.libbyapp.com/(link is external) This website provides an overview of the app and some videos to help patrons get started. Help Using Libby: https://help.libbyapp.com/(link is external). This website includes instructions for Getting started, Searching, Borrowing, Streaming and downloading, Returning, Kindle Books, Holds, Library cards, Tags, Activity, Other tips, and Troubleshooting. For trickier issues, OverDrive is also available for frontline help through Marketplace or through this form: https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/3216684/Libby-Support-Form(link is external). OverDrive Training: https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/playback/Playback.do?id=9gn5pu(link is external) This recorded webinar from OverDrive aims to help you learn how to get your first-time users started with Libby. As always, the WPLC OverDrive Support Community(link is external) is there for you to help you answer questions that you can't answer on your own. Please contact wplc-info@wils.org for more information or with any questions. (Copied from: https://www.wplc.info/libbyintro) Here are some tidbits from my Google newsletter:
- Last month, we announced a new version of Google Earth for the web, including interactive guided tours and a new 3D button that allows you to see any place from any angle. Try it out in your Chrome browser. - Everything Google I/O: Google I/O was held at the Google HQ in Mountain View, California on May 17-19. Check out all of the announcements - everything from virtual reality to Google Photos to YouTube to Google Assistant and the Actions on Google Developer Challenge. How often have you been peacefully reading online content on your PC and some garish video unexpectedly takes over? Boom! Peace gone. You can configure your browsers to disable video autoplay. Here’s how.
Each of these ‘disable’ steps are reversible. The effectiveness of the disable may vary from browser to browser but hopefully videos barging in on your reading will at least be diminished. Peace out!
Hello! Recently, OverDrive has moved to begin the transition to Libby from the existing OverDrive app. This transition will take quite some time, and will be done in phases. Phase 1 will encourage brand new users to download Libby instead of the OverDrive app. While OverDrive users in other states will see this change in June, the WPLC has opted to push this back to August in order to give us time to prepare to properly support the new app. Phase 2, which will happen later in the fall, will begin to encourage existing users to switch to Libby. It is unknown at this time if or when support for the existing app will end.
If you are not using Libby, we encourage you or your library's OverDrive support providers to become acquainted with it. Even though the app won't be pushed to new users until later this year, it is already available for public download and there will likely be support requests for it soon. You can download Libby from the App Store or Google Play. OverDrive is providing three upcoming webinars on Libby next week and you can find information about those Staff Training as well as general information here: https://resources.overdrive.com/meet-libby/. Please let us know at wplc-info@wils.org if you have any questions and feel free to share your feedback about Libby as you use it with us so we can help guide its development. We will continue to share updates - additional training and hard dates for the transition - as they become available. |
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