Passing on learning

In a few weeks I will be retiring from paid work in school and moving to a quieter life. In a concentrated effort to share some things I've learnt from a variety of places over the years, I'm sending a Tip of the Day to staff at school via email, as it is still the preferred method of communication within many schools. I'll credit ideas where I can find them, but some lessons have been absorbed from many sites, apologies in advance to those not cited.
Here's today's offering.

Passwords

If you are not using a random password generator here’s a quick tip for generating your own unique password.

1. Take a phrase unique to you e.g. I’ve worked at Trinity Grammar School for eleven years!
2. Take first letter of each word, turn one word into numbers, add some capitals and that becomes - IwaTGSf11y!
3. Now use that with first and last letters of site you are logging in to

Examples:

for Google - IwaTGSf11y!ge OR gIwaTGSf11y!e OR geIwaTGSf11y!
Repeat one of those patterns: for Facebook - IwaTGSf11y!fk for Twitter - IwaTGSf11y!tr

Easily remembered by you, change the pattern and/or phrase every 6 months – Stay safe online!
Within minutes of sending the email I'd had half a dozen positive acknowledgements. Lesson of the day for me, remember to keep sharing, what you think is obvious may be new information for others.

Useful sites about passwords

Common Craft Secure passwords
The Mozilla Channel How to choose strong passwords
Keepass KeePass Password Safe

Wily Widgets

Breaking through the wall with widgets

In many schools IT departments control the software available and the tools that users may add to browsers. An excellent way to point to students to resources that can often otherwise be added as toolbar extras, is to provide them with a range of widgets. Widgets expose both students and staff to tools they may not regularly use, or indeed they be unaware of their existence.

Two categories of widgets that I find particularly useful are Search and Dictionary widgets. Many of these come in a variety of colours, shapes and sizes. Once you have selected the look you want, simply copy the code and paste into your website.

Database widgets are prolific and depending on which ones your school subscribes to, can also be easily adapted for your needs.

Search

The newest widget in the pack is an Instagrok widget.

Many of these other favourite search tools are also embedded liberally throughout our LibGuides site.

Sweet Search is one of the most useful widgets directing users to sites that are all suitable for students. The widgets are available in a variety of sizes along with the Sweet Search4Me widget suitable for early learners.



The text and colours on the Duck Duck Go search box can be edited to suit your preferences.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that protects privacy and has a wide range of features.

Google Books and Google Scholar search boxes focus attention on specific search functions. By the Terms of Service, the HTML code cannot be altered in these search boxes, but if you use LibGuides you are able to set a default search term in the boxes so that students see the most appropriate search term for the context. An example of such a default search can be seen on our Pyschology guide.

Of course no reference to search boxes would be complete without Wolfram Alpha who provide a wonderful range of customised widgets in addition to basic search boxes.



Blekko also has a range of useful tools including this embeddable searchbox.

search

Trove searches Australian content

Dictionaries

Dictionary widgets are very useful for students working in situations where there are no inbuilt define functions.

This widget provides access to Oxford Dictionaries

Free online English dictionary from Oxford

If you have a preference for Cambridge there is a Google widget or a HTML version of this widget.

Merriam-Webster have a variety of 13 different search boxes for their dictionaries and thesauri such as the Learner's Dictionary below, suitable for younger students.

These are just a few of the many widgets available that can assist your users. Do you have favourite search and dictionary widgets that I have missed?

100 years of learning

This week I had the wonderful opportunity to celebrate my mother's 100th birthday with her and each of my six siblings, their partners and my husband. It was a special family occasion and a tribute to her in so many ways. The 15 of us lunched in a lounge room in the small country hospital in South Australia where she has been resident for the last seven and a half years. 
Here's a woman who left school at the end of primary school as there was no money for her to continue into secondary years so she needed to go out to work. She still had a burning desire to learn and never ceased to do so. She and my father struggled through a tough farm existence but she always valued 'learning' of any sort and encouraged us to always try and do our best.

One of her favourite mottos has been "if a job is worth doing then its worth doing well." This applied equally to her care of family, attitude to tasks and of course, learning.

Thank you Mum for so much, for your positive outlook on life and for the opportunities you provided for me which required great sacrifices made by both you and Dad.

Today many of her 27 grandchildren and 29 great grandchildren will call to see her. May they and all of us open our minds to the possibilities and enrichment that continual learning provides.