Debbie will be presenting a workshop on October 5, 2011 at the Florida Association for Media in Education (FAME) in Orlando, Florida.

A School-wide Lens on Evaluation: Who Knows What?

Young people need evaluation skills in a participatory digital world. Yet, they ditch our checklists and forget our mini-lessons in the dizzying stew of click-and-go wikified information. Well-publicized examples of doctored data and journalistic fabrications remind us that “truth” is complicated. Who is an authority when everyone is an author? How do culture and context impact evaluation? Can technology show us who to trust? We will apply new research to the age-old problems of evaluating information and will devise strategies for students (and teachers) in school and for “real.”

Please see http://www.floridamedia.org/?page=Conf_Workshops.

With more schools using e-book readers, we received questions about citing e-books in NoodleTools, “How do I cite an e-book on a device like a Kindle, Nook, or iPad?” To answer this question, we created Knowledge Base articles for APA and MLA formats:

(APA 6th ed.) How do I cite an e-book on a device like a Kindle, Nook, or iPad?

(MLA 7th ed.) How do I cite an e-book on a device like a Kindle, Nook, or iPad?

For Chicago format,  according to Chicago Manual of Style Online 14.166 an e-book citation should end with the name of the e-reader (e.g., Kindle edition) while the footnote or endnote could follow that with the chapter title or number (e.g., chap.2), a subheading or even a unique phrase that could be found by searching (Chicago Manual Q&A section).

A new NoodleBib online tutorial, “Creating an Outline,” is now available in NoodleTools Support Center under Tutorials.

http://www.noodletools.com/noodlebib/tutorials/outline/

This tutorial has captions.

We are very pleased to announce our newest team member, Amy Rogers. She will focus on communication projects, including accessibility and usability, online instruction, marketing and keeping our users informed of new developments.

Amy has a MLIS from the San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science and a B.S. in Economics from Mills College. She has years of web technology experience with businesses and nonprofits.

Amy is a nature lover and supports sustainable living. She loves science fiction and stories that focus on women, as well as classical cello music.

Over the past several years, our modus operandi has been to release a major software update in August, available just in time for the new school year. This summer, as we approached the final stages of development on a major, bottom-up redesign of Noodlebib’s citation management software, we realized we need more of a key ingredient – YOU.

While we have always welcomed customer feedback, between now and December we will be creating an Advisory Council of teachers and librarians who would like to spend some extra time evaluating NoodleBib’s powerful new look and feel. In September, Council members will receive early access to a beta version of the new user interface and teaching materials, to insure that the changes are useful and user-focused. If you are interested in an invitation, please submit a request using this form:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/advisory_registration

We’ll also be posting information on our blog, along with links to screencast tutorials that will help librarians, teachers and students become acquainted with the new teaching and learning interface. Later this Fall, we’ll be conducting webinars to teach some of the existing features of this powerful program.

Over Christmas break, the new version will be made available to all schools. If you are not ready to migrate to the new interface, there will be an administration option to continue using the old interface through the end of June 2012.

So. welcome back to school! For the first time, you won’t see any changes in NoodleBib when you return. But get ready – learning how to cite accurately will never be easier!

Thanks,
Amy Rogers
NoodleTools

We’ll be updating some hardware on the evening of Saturday, August 6th. This will only require downtime of 10-15 minutes. Exact timing TBD, but it should be around 8 PM PST.

We’ll be posting in the next day or two about our roll-out plans for the next version of NoodleBib (this Saturday hardware update is unrelated to that).

Update (8:55 PM PST, Saturday 8/6): This update is complete.