Schools

National Bullying Prevention Month

By Debra Kirby

When my oldest daughter, now a middle school teacher, brought home her first essay, it was on the subject of bullying. She wrote it after reading Judy Blume’s Blubber for a school assignment. The essay, which I still have, provided a preview of what a kind, compassionate person and awesome teacher she would one day become. As the 10th anniversary of National Bullying Prevention Month approaches this October, I thought I’d do a little research on the subject, which was never the focus of national attention when I was a student. It’s only in relatively recent years that bullying has been commonly recognized as something other than a “natural part of growing up” or rite of passage.

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Keeping the Conversation Going

Malala Yousafzai, Svetlana Alexievich and Shakespeare

I think of literary criticism as a conversation: an author speaks to an audience, which responds with comments, questions, sometimes praise, and sometimes disparagement. The discussion can last for centuries. In the case of Shakespeare, for instance, in 1592, early in his career, he was dismissed by fellow writer Robert Greene as an “upstart crow beautified with our feathers” and mocked as a “Shake-scene” (whatever that is).

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Travel Back in Time with Historical Artifacts

edison-talking-doll
Edison Talking Doll 2

By Traci Cothran

Quick: What do these objects all have in common?

  • Feed-sack Dress
  • John Brown’s Sharps Rifle
  • Edison Talking Doll
  • Psychedelic Lunch Box
  • A Monkey listening to the Scopes Trial

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Exciting Citation Enhancements Now Available in Gale Products

Chicago-Style Citation Tool Now Available!

Gale is happy to announce that Chicago-style citations are now available in Gale products! The new citation format adheres to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. The option is displayed when a user clicks on Citation Tools, and Chicago-style citations can easily be grouped and downloaded to Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. Chicago appears in all products that contain the Citation Tools feature, with the exception of Early Arabic Printed Books; it will be added to this product by the end of the year.

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Discovery: It’s More Than a Service; It’s a Way of Thinking

By Karen McKeown

Librarians learned long ago that the Field of Dreams adage “If you build it, they will come” does not apply to library resources.  Obtaining great resources is only the first step.  To be truly effective, library resources must be placed clearly and deliberately in the path of the intended users – and that means being where students, educators, and patrons go to find information.  To the user, what matters most is finding the right content at the right time with ease.

As we work to blaze new trails in the area of “discovery,” Gale is finding innovative ways to put information in the path of potential users – integrating it into the classroom, providing pathways to it on the open web, and expanding the reach of the library.  And we’re doing this with a very broad perspective – which means working with partners such as Google and Google Scholar; working with library services providers such as ProQuest, EBSCO and OCLC; and working with our own Cengage teams to enhance course materials and courseware such as MindTap™.

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Meet NGSS with Professional Development from NSTA

Start your school’s science programs off right with professional development titles from the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). This complete collection of 52 titles engages students with real-world scenarios representing science in all its messy, thought-provoking glory. Many of the titles support Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and include: Lesson plans and experiments for incorporating … Read more

The Dark and the Light: Dahl on Paper and Film

By Catherine DiMercurio

When I learned that September was the first ever Roald Dahl month, I tumbled instantly and joyfully back to my childhood, to another September day when I was beginning the third grade at a new school. My classmates and I sat clustered on the floor, around the feet of our teacher. She was kind and soft-spoken and smelled of vanilla, and she began reading James and the Giant Peach to us. The freckled blond boy next to me kept poking my shoulder, trying to annoy me or get me in trouble or both. But he was easy to ignore because I was instantly enveloped by the story of James and his horrible aunts and his glorious, magical adventure. And his new friends. Making new friends in a strange world sounded pretty lovely too, and just as fantastical and unlikely to a shy girl at a new school as James’s giant insect companions were to him.

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Gene Wilder, Roald Dahl, and the Chocolate Factory

By Traci Cothran

Gene Wilder’s passing is hard to accept, as he’s forever etched in minds playing Willy Wonka, complete with top hat and bushy eyebrows.  Or perhaps you best remember him with his mustache and frizzy hair in “Young Frankenstein,” in cowboy boots as the Waco Kid in “Blazing Saddles,” or as the nervous Leo Bloom with his blue blanket in “The Producers.”  They’re all amazing performances, but since Wonka is my personal favorite, and Roald Dahl a beloved writer, I took a look through our Gale collections to find some Wonka-related things about which to reminisce – here are just a few of them:

Did you know there was a Smell-o-Vision showing of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at the Boston Children’s Museum in 2007, where fans “forcibly waft[ed] the smells of blueberry pie and banana tapi(ph) over the audience, as well as the scents of dirt, grass and sushi”?  WOW, OH WOW.

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GVRL Makes Researching Easy

By Kevin Rygiel

With the summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro coming to a close, your patrons might have a continued interest to familiarize themselves with the sporting events. Thanks to GVRL’s strong search capabilities, they will be able to stay informed and might even find a new favorite sport!

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Flipped Classroom – Where Were You When I Needed You?

By Debra Kirby

If the flipped classroom concept had existed when I was a student, I might have avoided one of my most vivid and unpleasant childhood experiences — a home visit by my 4th grade teacher after repeated but failed attempts to curb my chattiness in his classroom. Mr. Y was a very nice guy and good teacher and had tried his best by moving my desk to different locations around the classroom, including and lastly right next to his desk at the front of the room, all to no avail. I was happy to talk to him too! Watching Mr. Y get out of his car and head up our walkway was one of those frozen in time memories for me. I can still recall the panicky feeling when I realized he was coming to my house.

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