New Journal Subscription: Journal of School Leadership

The WSU Library System is pleased to announce a subscription to a new journal--the Journal of School Leadership. Our subscription begins with the September 2005 issue, volume 15 issue 5. (This journal is available in print only. It is not yet available online from the publisher.)

Carnegie Foundation Overhauls Its Classification System

As reported in the November 18, 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching unveiled on Thursday the most sweeping changes in more than three decades in its system of classifying American colleges and universities.

The methodology is a "fundamental reconsideration" of the foundation's approach to institutional categorization, Carnegie officials said. Five new categories of institutions will augment the single-scheme method that has been in place since 1970. Carnegie's officials said they hoped the new classifications would bring greater precision to the categorizing of more than 4,000 institutions.

The five new categories that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is adding to its classification system for colleges and universities are as follows:

Undergraduate instructional program:Classifies institutions based on the level of undergraduate degrees awarded (associate or bachelor's); the proportion of bachelor's-degree majors in the arts and sciences and in the professional fields; and the extent to which an institution awards graduate degrees in the same fields in which it awards undergraduate degrees.

Graduate instructional program:Examines the nature of graduate education, with a focus on the program mix. Classification is based on the level of graduate degrees awarded (master's, professional, or doctoral); the number of fields represented by the degrees awarded; and the mix or concentration of degrees by broad disciplinary domain. Institutions are classified according to the breadth of graduate offerings and the concentration of degrees in certain fields or combinations of fields.

Enrollment profile:Groups institutions by the mix of graduate or professional students and undergraduate students, giving an approximate measure of a student populations' "center of gravity." Such distinctions can have implications for infrastructure, services, and allocation of resources, the foundation says.

Undergraduate profile:Classifies colleges and universities with respect to the proportion of undergraduate students who attend part or full time; the achievement characteristics of first-year students (including entrance-examination scores, which correspond to the selectivity of undergraduate admissions); and the proportion of entering students who transfer from another institution. Differences in those areas inform how an institution serves its students, including issues such as student services, the scheduling of classes, extracurricular activities, and time required to get a degree, among others, the foundation says.

Size and setting:Categorizes institutions by enrollment and residential character, variables that correspond to institutional "structure, complexity, culture, finances, and other factors," the foundation says.

Test Banks available for use in Blackboard

WSU has a license for Respondus software, which can be used to develop tests, quizzes and activities that can be uploaded into your Blackboard course site. Respondus has a Test Bank Network, where you can search for Publisher test banks in Respondus format, which are available for many of the leading textbooks in higher education. Instructors who adopt a participating textbook can download the Respondus-formatted test bank using their Respondus software [see how this works].

To learn more about using Respondus, or to get a copy of the Respondus software, go to the Office for Teaching and Learning website.

State Education Data Profiles

Search for statewide information in elementary/secondary education,postsecondary education, public libraries and selected demographics forall states in the U.S. You can select up to 4 states to compare at a time.In addition to getting statewide data you will also get data on U.S.averages and the ability to dynamically graph the results. The data used for the State Education Data Profiles data tool comes from many NCES sources and has just been updatedwith 2003 public library information and 2004-05 postsecondary educationinformation.

Nations Report Card in Reading and Mathematics

National and state-by-state results of the 2005 Nation's Report Card in reading and mathematics, detailing fourth and eighth grade achievementon the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were justreleased.

Findings since the previous assessment in 2003 show:

• Fourth-grade students scored higher in both reading and mathematics.
• Eighth-graders scored higher in mathematics, but reading scoresdecreased.
• Many of the differences in achievement between Black or Hispanicstudents and their White counterparts have narrowed.
• Most states did not see a change in reading scores for 4th or 8thgraders.
• Thirty-three states and jurisdictions showed an increase in 4th-grade mathematics scores.

Summer Seminars for Teachers

The Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars are designed to strengthen participants' commitment to high quality history teaching. Public, parochial, independent school teachers, and National Park Service rangers are eligible. These weeklong seminars provide intellectual stimulation and a collaborative context for developing practical resources and strategies to take back to the classroom. Seminars are tuition-free.

In addition, seminars offer:
Stipends of $500
Books, room and board in college dormitories
In-service and new teacher credit
Deadline for Applications:Applications must be submitted by February 1, 2006. Limited to thirty participants per seminar by competitive application. Preference given to new applicants.

2005 Citations in ERIC FirstSearch database

You can now access all of the citations for 2005 recently added to the ERIC database through the library's FirstSearch interface for ERIC. The FirstSearch interface allows you to search the ERIC database, and link directly to online available full-text resources through the WSU Library System using the Get it @ WSU (Article Linker) function. Click on the article title to get to the Get it @ WSU link.

Digest of Education Statistics Released

The National Center for Education Statatics (NCES) NCES has just released the Digest of Education Statistics, 2004. Topics in the Digest include: the number of schools and colleges;teachers; enrollments; graduates; educational attainment; finances;federal funds for education; employment and income of graduates;libraries; technology; and international comparisons.

Rod Paige and former top aides organize a consulting group

This story ran in the Sunday Detroit News/Free Press, and discusses the consulting group organized by former Department of Education Secretary Rod Paige and his former top aides. It is expected this group will be retained by the Department of Education for advice. You can read the story at the Detroit Free Press web site

Hurricane Help for Schools

The U.S. Department of Education has developed the web site Hurricane Help for Schools to assist schools and students affected by Hurricane Katrina. Companies and organizations can respond to the needs of students and send resources directly to them, and schools will be able to directly contact the companies and organizations offering help.

Dept of Ed Teacher-To-Teacher Initiative

The Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative site links e-learning digital professional development workshops on teaching methods, links to the 2004 Teacher-to-Teacher workshops, and information on the Teacher-to-Teacher Training Corps.

US Dept of Education Forecast of Funding

"The US Department of Education Forecast of Funding lists virtually all programs and competitions under which the Dept. of Education has invited or expects to invite applications for new awards and provides actual or estimated deadline dates for the transmittal of applications under these programs. The lists are in the form of charts--organized according to the program offices and include previously announced programs, as well as those planned for announcement at a later date." Announcement from AFT Michigan magazine

ERIC Adds New Content for New School Year

ERIC has announced the availability of a substantial amount of new 2004 and 2005 content. Highlights of this content addition include more than 10,000 bibliographic journal records from more than 300 current journals and over 1000 ERIC documents (most documents are available in full text). ERIC has also included more than 9000 journal records that have been acquired, but only partially processed. You can identify a partial record by the yellow tag indicating "In Progress" under the title in the search results. Note that the "In Progress" records are only available through the ERIC website. These records should be available through the WSU ERIC databases (FirstSearch and CSA) very soon.

Technology Source Archives

The Technology Source Archives are now available at www.technologysource.org. This journal focused on using information technology tools to enhance education, and was published from by Microsoft (1997-1998), then by UNC-Chapel Hill (1998-2001), and finally by the Michigan Virtual University (2001-2003). It was taken offline by the Michigan Virtual University in April, 2005.

A very similar journal, Innovate, is a bimonthly, peer-reviewed online periodical currently published by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University. The journal focuses on the creative use of information technology (IT) to enhance educational processes in academic, commercial, and governmental settings. Our basic assumption is that innovative uses of technology in one sector can inform innovative uses of technology in each of the other sectors.

Both journals are available by freely and you can link to them directly or through the WSU Library Catalog.

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to WSU! The WSU Library System has an exciting new website that we hope both you and your students will find easier to navigate. To get to a database, just click on the letter the database title starts with (like E for ERIC) directly under the Articles & Databases link. Click right on Articles & Databases to get to a database page specifically designed for Education. And mouse over the For Faculty tab to bring up a page with links to resources like our NEW ACQUISITIONS list and Media Services request page.

Literature and the Child Conference

Thursday, Sept. 29 at the Library of Michigan, Lansing
Featured speaker Russell Freedman begins this all day conference with his speech, “Bring ‘em Back Alive – Writing Non-fiction and Biography for Young People”. The day concludes with Sandra Hansen's storytelling, bringing historic characters to life. Click here for registration information.

2 Research Groups in Social Science Research Merging

From an article in Today's News, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16, 2005

The Campbell Collaboration, an international organization that analyzes the quality of social-science research, is joining forces with the American Institutes for Research, the American Institutes announced on Monday. The Campbell Collaboration, founded in 2000, provides information about the effects of policy in such areas as education and crime.

The two groups already collaborate on the "What Works Clearinghouse," an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education that reviews studies of the effectiveness of educational programs and policies.

Link to Campbell Collaboration
Link to American Institutes for Research
Link to What Works Clearinghouse

Educating Migrant Children

Yesterday, NPR ran the following story: "The U.S. Department of Education is developing new methods to track the children of migrant workers. School records can take weeks or months to catch up with migrant students, costing them valuable education time. The new system would streamline record keeping."

Click here to listen to this story.

Digital Futures programs at the PK Library

Earlier this year, CSPAN televised "The Digital Future", a series of eight discussions hosted by the Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center, which examine how the digital age is changing the most basic ways information is organized and classified. This series is being shown in the Purdy/Kresge Library on Wednesdays through the months of July and August. Titles of each segment, times and locations follow. For more information on the segment's contents, click here.

7/20 Universal Access to Knowledge, Kresge Auditorium
7/27 Quantum Computing, Kresge Auditorium
8/3 And Is All This Stuff Really Digital After All? Purdy Simons Room
8/10 The Experience of Reading, Purdy Simons Room
8/17 Copyright Issues, Kresge Auditorium
8/24 Distribution of Knowledge, Kresge Auditorium
8/31 New Internet Concept: From the Library of Information to the Library of Things, KresgeAuditorium

New Online Tutorial for EndNote

Nandita Mani, a librarian at WSU's Shiffman Medical Library, has developed an online tutorial that introduces new users to EndNote. The tutorial takes about 25 minutes. Please take a look, and feel free to link this tutorial in your Blackboard site for your students.

http://www.lib.wayne.edu/shiffman/tutorials/endnote/index.html