Leadership Triads of campus administrators, CITs, and librarians participated in a digital age “think tank” to explore selected content area TEKS with a technology twist!  Six elementary sessions were held in September, two middle school and one high school session were held in early October. 

The Triads were given a newspaper article describing an oil spill on the Texas Gulf coast.  The article and corresponding research links were from NISD databases.  Class Blogmeister, a district approved blogging tool, incorporated the research links and provided a way for the participants to respond to questions and participants expressed many ideas for ways to use this Web2.0 tool at their campuses!

Jefferson Middle School

Jefferson Middle School faculty were recently invited to dip into a sampling of delicious new ways to integrate district-wide online databases with the NISD curriculum.  Monday, October 8 was a staff development day and in the afternoon Jefferson librarian, Lucy Podmore, held three training sessions in a computer lab. 

Each 45-minute session was designed around a particular grade level curriculum.  Sixth grade teachers were shown an upcoming unit, the Solar System, and how to find information in Facts on File and EBSCOhost databases.  Seventh grade teachers were shown an upcoming unit, Catastrophic Events, and how to find information in Thomson Gale and EBSCOhost databases.  Finally, eighth grade teachers explored Thomson Gale and World Book Online Advanced to find information for their upcoming unit, Weather and the Greenhouse Effect.  All sessions included an activity which introduced the newest database, Visual Thesaurus. 

The Jefferson faculty enjoyed having the time to investigate the databases. They also loved the dips and chips provided for a snack!