Noodling The NoodleTools Blog

Server status

February 2nd, 2012

The Web site was unavailable most of the day today. The issue was a corrupted database server. No data was lost, as we replicate your work constantly to secondary servers.

NoodleTools is now running normally, and we have no reason to expect this to happen again. This was the first time in 13 years that we’ve experienced an issue with the database.

Our apologies for the inconvenience this caused you – we know how important the site is to you.  We’ll monitor the site closely on Friday.

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LibGuides for NoodleTools

January 6th, 2012

Brentwood School, an independent K12 school in California, just released a new LibGuides for NoodleTools. Check out how the librarian, Elisabeth Abarbanel, promotes research basics and NoodleTools to students and teachers. Ms. Abarbanel maintains a blog, InfoEagles, and she is using a RSS feed to display in LibGuides the research tips that are featured in her blog (lower right hand column).

For more great ideas how to use LibGuides to promote NoodleTools, take a look at what others have done at their schools via the LibGuides community.

TIP: To embed our tutorial videos on your web pages, as opposed to linking to them, use the videos at our YouTube NoodleTools Channel where embed code is provided for each video.

  1. Click on video you want to use
  2. Click the “Share” and then the “Embed” button

Note: these YouTube videos are not closed captioned. We will address this in the future. For now, captioned versions of tutorials are at our Tutorial page on our website.

Amy Rogers is happy to answer questions about using LibGuides for NoodleTools. She can be reached at amy [at] noodletools.com.

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New tutorials about students sharing projects with the teacher

December 13th, 2011

A new series of four tutorials for teachers and administrators on how to set up a drop box for students to share their projects, how to view the projects, and leave feedback about their projects. Links will take you directly to the screencasts.

All above tutorials are narrated and close captioned.

See also a tutorial created for students (1:42 minutes) on how to share their projects with their teacher.

Check out other screencasts in the Tutorials area.

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Server maintenance, Saturday, December 3rd, 9PM PST (11PM CST)

November 30th, 2011

UPDATED (Dec 3): The downtime time has been moved to 9PM PST, 11PM CST tonight.

We will be doing another server maintenance duty this Saturday, December 3rd at 8PM PST, 10PM CST. We expect the downtime to last approximately 20 minutes. Please plan accordingly. Thank you!

12/3/11 9:20PM PST Update: Server maintenance is complete!

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Live Interview Dec 1st with Debbie Abilock, Google’s Tasha Bergson-Michelson, Jolie Seroff & Steve Hargadon on Search Literacy

November 29th, 2011

Join a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar as Tasha Bergson-Michelson brings Debbie Abilock and Jole Seroff, and Steve Hargadon together for a conversation on “search literacy” in education: what sources should students be using, how do we help them evaluate what they find, and what is the school’s role in teaching search literacy and skills? Come with your ideas and questions. Details at http://www.stevehargadon.com/2011/11/live-interview-thursday-panel-on-search.html

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New online tutorials

November 17th, 2011

New online tutorials are available in our Tutorials area.

All above tutorials are narrated and close captioned.

We are working on a new series of online tutorials for teachers on how to create a drop box, view shared projects, viewing students’ citataions, notecards, and outline; and providing feedback on students’ citations and notecards. Stay tuned!

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Server maintenance Saturday, November 5th, 9 PM PST

November 4th, 2011

We are doing server maintenance on Saturday, November 5th at 9 pm PST. It will require downtime of 10-15 minutes. If you are logged in at the time, you will be automatically logged out. Please plan accordingly. Thank you!

11/5/11 9:40 PM PST Update: Server maintenance is complete!

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Connecting K-12 students with NoodleTools using Symbaloo

November 3rd, 2011

Here’s another note from a librarian who is using a web service to promote NoodleTools to K-12 students. Margaret Mary Ryan, a librarian at Saint Ephrem School in Bensalem, PA, wrote: 

I enjoy hearing how other teachers are using Noodle Tools…Over the summer I attended a workshop on Symbaloo and I have “Webmix” or group of web sites that I want the students to use for a particular project. It displays them as a group of tiles, almost like a Scrabble board. One tile provides a link to the google doc where I give them their instructions for the project. This webmix can be accessed from any computer once the student is given a link to it. I always include a NoodleTools tile so that the students have easy access to their accounts. This has proved to be working well for my sixth through eighth grade students. All that they need to complete a project is in one place and they can get to it easily.

Note: Symbaloo has a NoodleTools tile. Use their search function to locate the tile. 

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Article in SLJ: Demystifying Popular Search Engines and Getting Quality Research

October 31st, 2011

Debbie’s presentation at AASL 2011, “Power Searching: Demystifying Popular Search Engines and Getting Quality Research from Everyday Tools,” was a big hit. Read an overview about the session in School Library Journal:

…librarians packed into the workshop with their laptops in hand to hear Debbie Abilock, co-founder of Palo Alto, CA-based bibliography software company Noodle Tools, Natasha Bergson-Michelson, an instructional librarian at Google, and Jole Seroff, the director of library and information services at the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, give essential tips and answer questions about ways librarians—and their students—can refine their skills to get the most out of online searches.

What are the most popular search engines? Google, Bing, Blekko,DuckDuckGo, and Wolfram Alpha, but many of us—including librarians—lack the savvy to teach and use them to their full potential. But learning about a handful of commands can transform a strong searcher into a masterful one.

“Creative thinking makes good searching,” says Abilock, who told librarians to go back to the basics by thinking about how a successful reference interview is conducted. The fundamental questions that librarians ask patrons to help them define their informational needs also holds true for online searches, whether they’re fact-based ones, such as “What’s the population of Chicago?,” or inquiry-based questions, like “Why did the population there increase between a certain period of time?…”

Read more at…”AASL Conference 2011: Unlocking the Art of Search Engines

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NoodleTools Overview webinar recording now available

October 11th, 2011

Recordings of our webinar, NoodleTools: Overview for Teachers, Librarians, and Administrators, are now at http://www.noodletools.com/learn/webinars.php

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