April is National Poetry Month and you have lots of resources within Magnolia to help celebrate!  You can also find some helpful resources at Poets.Org, the official website of the Academy of American Poets.  Their Tips for Teachers contains lots of suggestions for using poetry in your classroom or library. 

Be sure to check out the Magnolia Training Guide for more resources!

The Horizon Project is a longstanding collaborative project between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the Educause Learning Inititative.  For the past six years, they have produced the Horizon Report, which focused on the use of technology in higher education.   There is now a K-12 edition, produced by the NMC and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN).  The pdf report, available for free on the web, is a must read for anyone interested in today’s and tomorrow’s technology in the K-12 system.

Six technologies or tends are highlighted in the 2009 report:  collaborative environments, online communication tools, mobiles/mobile computing, cloud computing, smart objects, and the personal web.  Each technology is treated in a different section, with an overview, a discussion of the relevance for the classroom, examples of the technology in practice and resources for futher reading.

Don't forget that you can tap into a world of online reference works through CREDO!  Provided as part of the MAGNOLIA databases statewide, Credo Reference brings encyclopedias, handbooks, dictionaries, and hundreds of other sources into your library.  For Women's History Month, check out one of the newer additions to Credo:  Women's History as Scientists: A Guide to the Debates (more info about the book).

March is Women's History Month and Education World has developed a list of resources that you can use in your classroom or library.  The online guide provides links to lesson plans, activities, and other resources. 

Why not share your favorite Women's History Month resource?  Simply add it to the comments section!

AASL (American Association of School Librarians) is once again hosting its survey of school libraries, School Libraries Count! All K-12 schools (public and private) are invited to participate in the online survey.  The survey closes on March 12.  The 2008 report is available online at the AASL website.

Libraries of all types have discovered blogging as a way to reach out to their users.  One excellent place to explore library blogs is the Blogging Libraries Wiki. Here you'll find a list of library blogs, including a K-12 list.  If you're a K-12 school library in Mississippi and you have a blog, let us know!

School Library Journal has FREE webcasts available on topics ranging from marketing library services to “capturing” reluctant readers.  The webcasts are available online at:  http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/webcasts.

Deborah Lee

Bobby Goff, from our systems department, asked me to post the following information:

As many of you know, over the past several weeks there have been problems accessing Magnolia.  this was caused by a defective upgrade on AT&T’s firewall.  On Friday, Feb. 6, AT&T corrected this issue and added a rule to all user accounts that allowed access to Magnolia.  We have checked several schools and libraries that were havng problems and all seems to be well!  If you are still having problems, there are a couple of steps you can take:

• Have your IT department unblock Magnolia using the delegated admin feature.  Have them add the site to their “white” list.  Instructions are in their operations guide.
• Open a trouble ticket by calling 1-800-317-3343 #2 #5.  AT&T security will unblock the site according to instructions on the trouble ticket.
• If the first two steps do not resolve your problem, please contact Bobby Goff at bgoff@library.msstate.edu.

Deborah Lee
MegaResource Program Coordinator

As part of the 2009 MegaResource School Librarian Workshop, we are discussing the concept of digital natives.  Want to learn more about digital natives and digital immigrants?  Check out some of these resources:

Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (New York: Basic Books, 2008).

“Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” by Marc Prensky, On the Horizon 9 (October 2001).

“Technology Literacy and the MySpace Generation” by Susan Mclester, Technology & Learning (August 22, 2008).

The Mississippi State University Libraries has updated the MAGNOLIA Training Resources web page.  As you may remember, we've had a web page that archived our MAGNOLIA training materials, PowerPoint slides, and related handouts.  We've updated this page and moved it into our LibGuides web pages.  We're in the process of updating some of the presentations but you'll still find useful tutorial and training links, including the Middle Search Plus tutorial developed by MSU.  Feel free to explore this web page:  http://guides.library.msstate.edu/magnolia.