North Regional Library

On Harps Mill Road, on the other side of the football stadium, we have an awesome public library branch! The North Regional Branch is part of the Wake County Libraries and has the latetst books, audio books, and ebooks that you can even download from home. Go to their website and do a serach. Reserve the book and pick it up at your convenience. You can also hang out, do teen activities, study, and volunteer. They have at Teen Advisory Group (TAG), where you can help make changes to your public library. To get involved, keep an eye out for their events.

Click here for information about this month's events. For more details, email the Teen Librarian Christy Fisherfor details.

Research Toolkit for Teachers

In support of our school’s philosophy, the Ravenscroft Libraries strive to develop students as self-directed learners, complex thinkers, quality producers, collaborative workers, and community contributors.  In 2006 we worked with the Upper School English Department to create the Ravenscroft Researcher as a guide for research and citation using the framework of the Big6 methodology. In the last few years, we’ve kept the ideas the same, but now have even more tools your class can use in their next poster presentation, slide show, or research paper.

Brainstorm

Free write or collaborate with others to define the task and generate ideas for research focus. 

• Google Draw - a tool to create thought bubbles and connect ideas
• Paper – yes,  get out the colored pencils and markers!
• Prezi – prezi is a blank canvas and it is easy to add images and words, manipulate these items, and then create a path to make it into a slideshow

Research 

 Find and evaluate sources to answer your research questions. 

• Library Resources - includes our books and online databases, connecting you to thousands of scholarly and popular articles.  To find out more about available sources, read the database chapter in the Ravenscroft Researcher.

Organize Sources

Use these tools to synthesize information; take notes, organize an outline, integrate with Google Docs to create a project, and publish a works cited.   

• EasyBib - comes with lesson plans and tutorials – must create account on campus to get started
• NoodleTools - teacher resources and tutorials – also must be on campus to create account

EasyBib is good for collecting sources to create a works cited.  NoodleTools has features like notecard templates for quotes, paraphrase, and text.  Teachers can give comments on the notecards too, to open up dialogue on sources. 

Share Research

Apply knowledge by creating a presentation or writing a paper to share findings.

• Prezi - students create free accounts by giving Ravenscroft email address, see videos and rubric
• SlideRocket - logs in using Google Account, see videos here
• Google Apps - with your Google Account, you can write your paper, create a slide show or website

Evaluate Process 

• Google Apps  - use a survey to find out how the research process went for each student

For further exploring these tools, take this survey to go through each of the steps again and comment to let your librarians know what else they can do to help!