ISTE 2011- A takeaway from a Vendor? Sweet... no... SweetSearch!

When I was at ISTE11 in Philly I did not spend much time in the vendor hall. I never feel comfortable talking to vendors since I have so little clout when it comes to what my district purchases. When I did go into the hall I was specifically looking for World Book to see what their new science module was all about. I was so focused on that mission that I almost missed the biggest library takeaway of them all. Mark Moran of SweetSearch lured me in to his booth with bookmarks, yes that was all it took, paper bookmarks (since I give out more than 400 book marks to students each week of the school year this was quite a prize). Anyway, the bookmarks give students tips for Internet Research. Mark who is the founder and CEO of Dulcinea Media, the parent company of SweetSearch, told me about this free search engine for students. It searches only credible web sites. The search engine part is free but there is so much more and it will have a pay component. I love how well researched this product is and I love that some of it is free in case the other librarians do not agree that this is as great as I think! I also just started following Mark Moran on Twitter. And a SweetSearch search came up with a webinar link that explains more about SweetSearch. The video below is what Mark was offering at ISTE11.



A YouTube search of SweetSearch came up with this tutorial from Anna Laura Brown the SocialNetworkingLibrarian.



What do I think of SweetSearch? I am ready to put the widget on my library home page!

CIPA and Blocked Sites... the Truth!

In library classes and in technology integration classes for my library and technology teaching certifications I learned about the anachronisms for the various acts that protect our children online. The law of the land now is CIPA. The Children’s Internet Protection Act was enacted in 2001 by the federal government to make sure kids were not exposed to offensive Internet content on school and library computers. It evolved from COPA, the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 that was a direct response to the Supreme Court decision striking down the Communications Decency Act in 1997. While I learned a lot about how the acts evolved and what each was supposed to accomplish, nothing prepared me for the frustration of teaching with a website one day and going in to use it the next day only to find it was blocked by district filters. Recently in her blog post “Straight from the DOE: Dispelling Myths About Blocked Sites,” Tina Barseghian spelled out just what I was taught and wish administrators with the block everything mentality would understand: YouTube is not the enemy, websites can be unblocked for teachers, broad filters are not the answer, unblocking some sites will not cause the district to lose E-rate, teachers and librarians should be equipped to teach students to be responsible digital citizens, and teachers are not the bad guys and if they ask to teach with a sight they should be trusted. For more explanation read Barseghian’s post, it is a breath of fresh unfiltered air.