Monday, May 25, 2009

Why Can't I Skip My Twenty Minutes of Reading Tonight?

Why Can't I Skip My Twenty Minutes of Reading Tonight? (shared on mailring by Emmy Ellis: source unknown) came via my granddaughter's 2nd grade teacher. I was so happy to receive it and want to share it with you too!

Why Can't I Skip My Twenty Minutes of Reading Tonight?
Let's figure it out -- mathematically!

Student A reads 20 minutes five nights of every week;
Student B reads only 4 minutes a night .. or not at all!

Step 1: Multiply minutes a night x 5 times each week.
Student A reads 20 minutes x 5 times a week = 100 mins./week
Student B reads 4 minutes x 5 times a week = 20 minutes

Step 2: Multiply minutes a week x 4 weeks each month.
Student A reads 400 minutes a month
Student B reads 80 minutes a month

Step 3: Multiply minutes a month x 9 months/school year
Student A reads 3600 minutes in a school year
Student B reads 720 minutes in a school year

Student A practices reading the equivalent of ten whole school days a year. Student B gets the equivalent of only two school days of reading practice.

By the end of 6th grade if Student A and Student B maintain these same reading habits, Student A will have read the equivalent of 60 whole school days.
Student B will have read the equivalent of only 12 school days.

One would expect the gap of information retained will have widened considerably and so, undoubtedly, will school performance. How do you think Student B will feel about him/herself as a student?

Some questions to ponder:

Which student would you expect to read better?
Which student would you expect to know more?
Which student would you expect to write better?
Which student would you expect to have a better vocabulary?
Which student would you expect to be more successful in school... and in life?

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Great COD Library Site Resources Available to You!

Visit the College and Career Information Center on the upper level of the Library to use the DuPage area’s largest collection of books and audiovisual materials on job search, career, and college information.

As COD students, I have listed other COD Library Site Resources (http://www.cod.edu/library) that are available to you:

1) ReferenceUSA. U.S. company information searchable by name, address, ZIP code, SIC code, yellow page directory listing. Allows 100 prints or downloads per search. Access to 14 Million U.S. Businesses. COD paid 21,000. This is an amazing job seeking tool and will lead you to company information that may include contact information. It will also allow you to find businesses by occupation titles. A great way to find netowrk occupations, addresses for sending resumes, ect.

2) Hoover’s Online. Hoover’s, Inc. delivers comprehensive company, industry, and market intelligence. This database covers 12 million companies, and provides in-depth coverage of 25,000 of the world’s top business enterprises. Good for interview homework. You might use it to retrieve information/finances of businesses you are interested in seeking employment to give you that eompetitive edge when interviewing (or deciding if you want that interview).

3) O*Net Dictionary of Occupational Titles Online. Allows users to find detailed information on over 950 occupations, search for occupations that use skills, look at related occupations, view occupation snapshots, and connect to other on-line career information resources.

4) Horizons. COD Library Home Page>Article database>Reference>Careers>Horizons. Career Information System (CIS) offers regional, state and national information about occupations, schools, financial aid, and job searches. Please note that you must be an Illinois resident to use segments of Horizons.

5) Discover. COD Library Home Page>Article database>Reference>Careers>Discover. Information about careers and colleges including interest inventories. Occupations and education requirements.

6) Jobs, careers & colleges link off of the COD Library Home Page. Overview sites – Richard Bolles’ JobHuntersBible.com and The Riley Guide; National and Chicago Area job listing sites; company information, and salary surveys.

7) Learning Express. COD Library Home Page>Article database>Reference>Careers>Learning Express. LearningExpress Library provides a completely interactive online learning platform of practice tests and tutorial course series designed to help patrons, students, and adult learners succeed in the academic or licensing tests they must pass. Features include immediate scoring, complete answer explanations, and an individualized analysis of results. Includes tests such as GRE, TOEFL, ASE and GED.

8) The Illinois Department of Employment Security. Workforce, career information, and labor market information. Reliable source for information about the state’s labor market. http://www.ilworkinfo.com. Includes: I*Compass on-line training tool that will help you better understand and use the workforce, labor market and career information online course designed to help you use the IL Depart. Of Employment Workforce Information Center (WIC) and the Career Resource Network Career Resources (ICRN), and Labor Market Information (LMI Source). Good resourses.

9) World Cat. COD Library Home Page>Article database>Find a Database by Title>World Cat. Locates books and other materials in libraries worldwide. Should be able to find any book. 53,000 libraries.

10) Linkin. COD Library Home>Linkin Icon. A local partnership comprised of Skokie Public Library, Arlington Heights Memorial Library, the Gail Borden Public Library, Elgin Community College and the College of DuPage. If the material you are looking for is not available in the C.O.D. Library, LINKin provides easy access to the collections of the partner libraries. Item requested through LINKin will usually arrive within three or four days. Inter-library loan.

11) Extended Academic ASAP. COD Library Home Page>Article database>Reference>Careers> Extended Academic ASAP. Combining indexing, abstracts and full text, this database offers balanced coverage available through 3,000 indexed and 1,900 full-text titles in a wide variety of disciplines including: social science journals, humanities journals, science and technology journals, national news periodicals, general interest magazines, newswires, The New York Times and many others. More than 1,400 journals are peer reviewed, and more than 20 years of backfile coverage are included. Magazines and Journals. Use “and” between keywords to find any reference. May want to limit to articles with text; to refereed publications.

12) SocIndex. COD Library Home Page>Article database>Sociology. The database features more than 1,700,000 records with subject headings from a 15,600 term sociological thesaurus designed by subject experts and expert lexicographers. This product also contains informative abstracts for more than 740 "core" coverage journals dating as far back as 1895. In addition, this file provides data mined from more than 540 "priority" coverage journals as well as from over 2,800 "selective" coverage journals. Further, extensive indexing for books/monographs, conference papers, and other content sources is included. Use advanced Search.

13) Newspaper Databases: Chicago Tribune (COD paid 8000), Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times (COD paid 8000).

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

New Security Library Books at COD Library

Following are some of the new security books I have had added to the COD library recently. Check them out - I mean that literally!

1) Computer security handbook; by Seymour Bosworth, M.E. Kabay, Eric Whyne
2) Identity theft handbook : detection, prevention, and security /
Martin T. Biegelman
3) Implementing 802.1X security solutions for wired and wireless
networks / Jim Geier
4) Implementing email and security tokens : current standards,
tools, and practices / Sean Turner, Russ Housely
5) Risks, controls, and security : concepts and applications /
Vasant Raval, Ashok Fichadia
6) Payment card industry data security standard handbook / Timothy
M. Virtue
7) Windows Vista security : securing Vista against malicious attacks
/ Roger A. Grimes, Jesper M. Johansson
8) The web application hacker's handbook : discovering and
exploiting security flaws / Dafydd Stuttard, Marcus Pinto
9) Schneier on security / Bruce Schneier
10) Secure computer and network systems : modeling, analysis and
design / Nong Ye
11) Principles of information systems security : text and cases /
Gurpreet Dhillon
12) Implementing NAP and NAC security technologies : the complete
guide to network access control / Daniel V. Hoffman
13) Computer security and cryptography / Alan G. Konheim
14) Phishing and countermeasures : understanding the increasing
problem of electronic identity theft / edited by Markus
Jakobsson, Steven Myers
15) Handbook of information security / Hossein Bidgoli, editor-in-
chief
16) The CISSP and CAP prep guide / Ronald L. Krutz, Russell Dean
Vines
17) CISSP : certified information systems security professional study
guide / James Michael Stewart, Ed Tittel, Mike Chapple
18) CISSP for dummies / by Lawrence Miller, Peter Gregory
19) CCSP : Secure Intrusion Detection and SAFE Implementation : study
guide / Justin Menga, Carl Timm
20) CCNA security official exam certification guide / Michael
Watkins, Kevin Wallace
21) IT security interviews exposed : secrets to landing your next
information security job / Chris Butler
22) The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
Kevin D. Mitnick, William L. Simon, Steve Wozniak (Foreword by)