InfOhio, the Information Network: A Note to Educators of Educators

December 2006


Dear Ohio Education Faculty Member,

Did you know that when your students graduate and become teachers in Ohio’s schools they will have access to a multi-million dollar collection of electronic research resources?

Today, you and your students have access to a wealth of electronic research databases, thousands of electronic scholarly journals, and much more from your local campus library and OhioLINK, the Ohio Library and Information Network. However, when Ohio’s students graduate college and enter their professional careers they are no longer eligible to access most OhioLINK and campus library resources.

Fortunately, INFOhio, Ohio’s counterpart to OhioLINK for K-12 students, teachers, and administrators, makes more than fifty of the electronic resources you use today—including the EBSCOhost collection of databases, NewsBank’s America’s Newspapers, and the Oxford Reference Online Premium Collection—available to your students.

In conjunction with OhioLINK and OPLIN, the Ohio Public Library Information network, INFOhio provides a core collection of electronic resources, called the Ohio Web Library, which can be accessed from any Ohio school building or remotely. In addition, INFOhio offers certain resources for K-12 students which are not available through OhioLINK, most notably SIRS Discoverer for elementary students.

It is essential that preservice teachers be aware of these resources, especially as they prepare to complete their student teaching assignments. INFOhio is pleased to be able to make these resources available to students in Ohio’s Colleges of Education.

To access INFOhio’s Core Collection, preservice teachers can visit the INFOhio Web site at www.infohio.org and click on the Core Collection resource buttons. Users must enter the required username (INFOhio) and password (Explore). The enclosed color brochure provides further explanation about the Core Collection. Additional copies can be downloaded at: http://www.infohio.org/Documents/ER/ERresources2006/FlierPass200608.pdf. Enter the password: 2006info (case sensitive) to access the PDF file.

For more information about INFOhio, visit http://www.infohio.org/ or view the introductory video at http://www.infohio.org/Parent/OutreachKit/Video2005.html. Tip sheets, PowerPoints and other materials designed to help use each tool are available via the "Help Resources" pages at http://www.infohio.org/ER/ERhelp.html.

Please contact a librarian at your local campus library if you have any questions about the enclosed materials or INFOhio resources.

Sincerely,


Theresa M. Fredericka
Executive Director

Yet Another New Radical Change Needed, this time in High Ed...

In the NY Times and elsewhere, the NEW Commission on the Skills of the American Worker has had the executive summary of its NEW report demanding "radical" changes in higher education to offset the lag in STEM skills of the American Worker. One of the changes suggested apparently is to turn some schools over to private entrepreneurs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/education/15school.html

The Commission's web site has a number of background reports available on its website along with short testimonials about the forthcoming report "Tough Choices or Tough Times" from Chester Finn, William Brock, Sharon Lynn Kagan and others;

http://www.skillscommission.org/