Gearing up for Holiday Break & More

Cross posted on nchslibraryinfo.blogspot.com and coauthored by Jackie Whiting.

Research challenge of the week (a new regular feature):
The prize goes to Charlie Adl who was looking for literary criticism on an obscure satirical writer named James Pinkerton, whose work How to Write Suspense was published in a now defunct online magazine called Modern Humorist (2000-2003). Beyond the original text itself, we were not able to find what he was looking for (it doesn't seem to exist), but using the database Literature in Context, we were able to find analysis of satire as a genre, which helped Charlie complete his assignment. This new feature was inspired by Dan Russel's blog, SearchReSearcher.

We are thinking of re-naming December: National Research Month! There are lots of really interesting research projects going on across the disciplines, and we are helping students through these processes.

In Social Studies, Ms. Arastu's Global II students are creating the OP-ED section of an 1833 newspaper in which they critically review and extoll the virtues of the effects of industrialization in England. Their newspaper is being modeled on the "Room for Debate" section of The New York Times and will be published within the NCPS domain on a Google Site.

Honors Earth Science students in Ms. McLellan's class are researching the impact of climate change
 on different regions of the globe and making predictions about the future of that region. Research is complete and predictions are being drafted. Ultimately, the students will publish their findings on a Google My Map so that they can reflect on the bigger picture by comparing their regional information and conclusions.

The Game Design UX (user experience) station in the library was a hit! Thanks to all of the students who volunteered as beta testers and gave feedback to their peers! Each day, the names of the students who played games and provided feedback were put into a drawing for some rather cool prizes. The winners were:

• Monday: Thomas won a portable charger
• Tuesday: Spencer won Krispy Chicken
• Wednesday: Gabe won Rams Cafe lunch
• Thursday: Finn won $10 to Tony's Deli

The game design students are now returning to their games to incorporate the feedback they received before submitting their final games as their course exam. Good luck, gamers!

Tech Tip of the Week:

Since Dr. Marc Brackett's visit to the high school on November 30th, we've been talking about EQ (Emotional Intelligence). But in our planning discussions about our February professional learning, we discovered a tool that measures Digital Quotient Intelligence (DQ - not Dairy Queen!). For more on Digital Intelligence, check out this article from the World Economic Forum.