News

Think back to your school library and the poster featuring a celebrity posing with their favorite book. In celebration of National Library Week, MERIT Library will again be offering to create personalized READ! Posters for anyone between the hours of 1pm to 5pm; April 13-April 18th. The library will offer numerous backgrounds to choose from. Interested participants are encouraged to bring their favorite book(s) to MERIT Library (formerly the CIMC) and pose for their personalized READ! Poster. Posters will be 11"x17" and cost $2.00 each*. One poster per person or group. Participants should allow one week for poster creation.

*Campus print/photocopying cards are the only method of accepted payment.

When: 1pm to 5pm; Monday April 13th - Saturday April 18th
Where: MERIT Library; 3rd Floor Teacher Education Building; 225 N Mills St; Call 608-263-4750 for more information.

We have a new version of Office 2007 in our midst which brings new functionality and a new user interface to WORD, EXCEL, PowerPoint and Access. SoE faculty and staff are invited to explore the new version of Office 2007 by attending MERIT library workshops, learning from online tutorials, attending campus workshops, and working one-on-one with the MERIT instruction team.

SoE faculty and staff may request the new version be installed on desktop computers. To learn more, see our SoE Office 2007 FAQs posted online.

For more information, please contact the MERIT Help Desk at helpdesk@education.wisc.edu.

April is National Poetry Month, and our poetic display will have you rhyming and smiling with Edgar Allen Poe and many others. Come in to find Web resources and colorful children's books for use in your classroom or for leisurely reading. For one week in April we celebrate National Library Week (April 12-18). Stop by our display and see why libraries are so important to students and the community at large. Don't forget to plant a tree this month! We are celebrating Earth Day (April 22) with a display full of environmental resources and lesson plan ideas. We hope to see you in MERIT Library soon!

MERIT Library is currently in the process of enhancing our resource guides with Web 2.0 tools and a more user-friendly and interactive design. We recently completed the first guide, Physical Education Teacher Education, using the LibGuides platform, and we are moving forward with other education-related subjects. These guides are great aides for doing research and having many library and Web resources gathered in one place. If you have suggestions for resources in any subject area or would like to collaborate on a LibGuide in your subject area, please e-mail Amanda Manteufel.

Nearly 40 faculty and instructional support staff gathered in February at a monthly meeting of Community of Educational Technology Support (ComETS) members to explore what emerging technologies might be deployed on the UW-Madison campus to improve instruction to students. Six campus presenters showcased their research, highlighting how some of today's information technologies have the potential to both positively and negatively impact teaching and learning.

Catherine Stephens, Instructional Technology Services Coordinator with the School of Education, provided an overview of the UW-Madison island project in Second Life, a three-dimensional virtual world where online users can create content and communicate with other avatars (virtual personas) using voice and text chat. "This is a collaborative venture. Our support group includes faculty and staff from several schools, colleges, and IT departments. The project came about as a response to the growing interest in teaching with virtual worlds at UW-Madison." she said.

Bullying, harassment, school violence, school security

No Putdowns: A Program for Creating a Healthy Learning Environment by Encouraging, Understanding and Respecting, by Jim Wright, Wendy Stein, and Stephanie Pelcher.
Revised ed.
National Center for Youth Issues, 2006
LTy LB 1139.S6 W75 2006

I Didn't Know I Was a Bully: Six Literature-Based Lessons on Bullying Behaviors, by Melissa Crawford Richards; illustrated by Jeffrey Zwartjes.
Mar-Co Products, 2006
LTy BF 637 .B85 R522 2006
Summary: Lesson plans that give children experience in recognizing subtle bullying behaviors. Topics include exclusion, friendship bullying, and cyberbullying.

Students Harassing Students: The Emotional and Educational Toll on Kids, by Jan Cantrell.
Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2008
Prof LC 212.8 .C36 2008

Bullying: A Complete Guide to the Support Group Method, by George Robinson and Barbara Maines.
SAGE, 2008
Prof LB 3013.3 .R645 2008

Managing Extreme Behaviours in the Early Years, by Angela Glenn, Alicia Helps and Jacquie Cousins.
Routledge, 2009
Prof LC 4803.G72 M434 2009

Targeting Violence in Our Schools: Thinking Towards Solutions, by Brenda Guenther LeTendre and Richard P. Lipka.
Christopher-Gordon Publishers, 2003
Prof LB 3013.32 .L46 2003

Ceremonial Violence: A Psychological Explanation of School Shootings, by Jonathan Fast.
1st ed.
Overlook Press, 2008
Prof LB 3013.32 .F37 2008
Summary: Analyzes the Columbine High School shooting and four other cases to explain why teenagers commit school rampage shootings. Includes a clear, detailed narrative of the Columbine tragedy.

Security in Schools: Its Effect on Students, by Shannon Womer Phaneuf.
LFB Scholarly Pub. LLC, 2009
Series: Criminal justice
Prof LB 2866 .P54 2009

The African American experience: new selections in MERIT's PreK-12 collection

Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present, by Nell Irvin Painter.
Oxford University Press, 2006
LTy E 185 P15 2006
Summary: History written for a new generation of African Americans, stretching from life in Africa before slavery to today's hip-hop culture. Describes the staggering number of Africans--over ten million--forcibly transported to the New World, most doomed to brutal servitude in Brazil and the Caribbean. Painter looks at the free black population, numbering close to half a million by 1860 (compared to almost four million slaves), and provides a gripping account of the horrible conditions of slavery itself.

Living on a Slave Plantation [videorecording].
SVE & Churchill Media, 2006
LTy E 441 .L58 2006
Summary: Unearths the roots of the plantation system, considers the problems that the first settlers encountered when establishing plantations, and visits different sites to discover the patterns of daily slave life.

Piano Starts Here: the Young Art Tatum, by Robert Andrew Parker.
Schwartz & Wade Books, 2008
LTy ML 3930.T2 P37 2008
Summary: The story of the young Art Tatum, who became one of the all-time greats of jazz piano. Titled after the classic Tatum recording, "Piano starts here."

Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation, by Andrea Davis Pinkney; illustrations by Brian Pinkney.
Greenwillow Books, 2008
LTy PZ 3 P6333 Boy 2008
Summary: Illustrations and rhythmic text recall the December, 1955, bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.

I Want to be Free, by Joseph Slate; illustrated by E.B. Lewis.
Putnam, 2009
LTy PZ 3 .S62897 Iw 2009
Summary: Based on a sacred Buddhist tale as related in Rudyard Kipling's novel "Kim," tells of an escaped slave who rescues an abandoned baby from slave hunters.

DoIT's Academic Technology survey is sent out bi-annually to faculty, instructional staff, and teaching assistants to determine the state of instructional technology adoption on the UW-Madison campus. Survey results help identify instructional technology needs. The 2008 Academic Technology survey was designed to provide data to support decision making on how to best align services and support in ways that will meet the teaching needs and technology preferences of campus clients.

Survey results are posted online. SoE faculty and staff are invited to share comments about survey results by contacting Catherine Stephens, or post a comment to DoIT's academic technology staff.

MERIT would like to salute several amazing student staff members who were recently honored with a WOW! (What Outstanding Work!) Awards. This award recognizes staff members who have gone above and beyond our already high expectations for service. Award winners include: Emily Bouwkamp (library), Nicole Mennen (library), Michelle Russo (library and media design), Peggy Cruse (library), Ben Saffran (IT), Megan Marvel (library), and Zena Hirsch (media design). A huge thank you to all of them for helping MERIT provide excellent service to our users!!

Catherine Stephens recently was a panelist at the ComETS Emerging Trends discussion in February. Catherine addressed teaching and learning on the UW-Madison Island in Second Life. For more information and copies of materials, visit http://cometset.pbwiki.com/

Brenda Spychalla and Anna Lewis presented with representatives from Carroll University at the Midwest Regional EDUCAUSE Conference in Chicago in March. The presentation entitled, "The Urge to Merge: Rethinking Library and IT Services" focues on the recent merger of the CIMC, IMDC and SoE IT and the creation of MERIT. To view the presentation, visit https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/aklewis/web/UrgeToMerge.