In two other interesting articles I found on schoollibraryjournal.com, Walter Minkel makes a strong case for including resources like NoodleTools in our libraries.
In the first article, "The Trouble with Citing Sites," he argues that teaching students to cite sources (or even doing it for ourselves) was hard enough before the advent of the Internet, but now that students do so much of their research online, it has become a monumental task. Students feel that if an essay or article is online, out there in cyberspace, they can copy it freely without giving credit to the authors/creators/owners. In addition, citing Internet sources is not easy, so they do not even try. He, and Abilock, feel that the sooner we get students to realize that they have to give credit to the owners of the material that they copy off the Web, the easier the task will get as they go along. That is why he endorses resources like NoodleTools which can be used with kids in very early grades. He says that other resources like http://www.mla.org/ are too advanced for younger students. Read the whole article at www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA153093.
In his other article, Minkel argues that librarians must lead in the fight against online plagiarism by "showing students how to define plagiarism, how to recognize when they're committing it, and how to credit and cite others' works correctly." He also suggests "working with teachers in setting plagiarism policies." He proposes introducing students to the idea of citing sources as soon as possible in their academic lives. This article can be found at www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA202848.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Money for NoodleTools
In last week's post, I was complaining about having to pay a subscription for using NoodleBib, but after reading Walter Minkel's article, "NoodleTool's Tough Choice," I have to do like the kids and say "my bad." In the article, Minkel explains why Debbie Abilock and her son Damon, co-creators of NoodleTools, had to start charging for what was initially a free service. It seems that the site was getting as many as 400,00 hits a day and so their Internet Service Provider shut the site down because "it was clogging its bandwidth." In the effort to continue serving the thousands who demanded the service, Abilock and her son set up their own server and that costs quite a lot of money. Plus, they needed time and and manpower to maintain and upgrade the site. They, therefore, had no choice but to start charging a fee for the service.
Read the complete article at
What does that mean for us? As we prepare to provide our students with the best access to information through reputable sources, we will have to demand that our school administrators give us the money for subscription fees for resources like NoodleTools. That is a must-have in today's library. I already have to write memos to continually beg and remind the principal and assistant principals to put aside money for databases and other services, since there is no specific fund for technology in the library. I have my work cut out for me, but I want to get this resource for my students.
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