Media Moments

March 2025

The media center recently subscribed to PBS Western Reserve Passport streaming video service. This subscription allows staff to access an impressive collection of PBS TV shows, including Nature, Frontline, Ken Burns collection, American Experience, PBS News Hour, and Nova. These videos make excellent supplementary resources to enhance curricula across a wide range of subjects. You can access PBS Passport at

https://video.westernreservepublicmedia.org

Reach out to Andrew Robitaille if you would like to obtain the login to PBS Passport.

Many people have been requesting access to The Atlantic magazine. I am happy to report that print issues have begun arriving in our media center. Additionally, staff can access the electronic articles. If you would like to receive the login to our online Atlantic account, please reach out to media center staff.

March is Women's History Month. The media center has a display of books that celebrate influential women. We also have many ebooks and audiobooks through Sora that feature women characters, authors, and stories. Discovery Education offers an excellent Women in History collection that celebrates the remarkable journeys of legendary women throughout history. Newsela also offers many excellent articles about women's history. Please stop by the media center to see our book display and to inquire about our resources about Women's History Month.

In April the media center will feature book displays for Arab American Heritage Month, Autism Acceptance Month, and National Deaf History Month. We offer a rich collection of books that feature authors and characters from these diverse backgrounds. Please stop by the media center to check out these displays and find an enriching read.

The HHS media center has a current subscription to the New York Times. The type of subscription has changed from last year. Our current subscription is site based. Any user within the high school building will have instant authentication to the New York Times. There are no usernames or passwords to remember and no account creations to worry about. Staff and students can access NY Times articles while they are in the school building. The subscription will not work when off campus. We hope this new subscription model will provide for a more user-friendly experience for everyone.

April 7 is Right to Read Day, where we celebrate reading and show gratitude for the amazing libraries that serve our communities and our schools. How will you celebrate Right to Read Day? We hope to see you in the media center where we can talk to you about our initiatives to promote student reading. And why not choose a great book to take home for yourself? Thank you for your support of libraries. 🙂

NotebookLM is a research and note-taking online tool developed by Google Labs that uses artificial intelligence to assist users in interacting with their documents. It is a truly amazing resource that allows you to upload a collection of sources (Google Docs, PDFs, websites, text, YouTube links) and prompt the chatbot with questions about the sources. The AI will scan through all of your sources and answer questions you pose to the chatbot. This a very powerful way to quickly gather information from lengthy documents, videos, and websites. NotebookLM can then make study guides, briefing docs, and even a podcast, based on a summary of the sources. The podcasts are really cool! They sound like two real humans having an informal dialogue about your sources. You really should give NotebookLM a try!

https://notebooklm.google.com/

Diffit, a prominent resource for creating differentiated AI-generated materials, has introduced Diffit Books. This resource allows teachers to quickly generate a wide variety of educational resources for novels and chapter books.

https://app.diffit.me/#books

Teachers are able to check their library account to see what items they are currently borrowing. Here's how:

1. Click on the iSearch icon on the main library website.
2. Select My Account in the top-right corner.
3. For the User ID, type your 7-digit employee ID number.
4. For the PIN, type your birthday in MMDD format. (Use four digits. Eg., April 9 is 0409.)
5. Select the Checkouts tab to see your current loans.

Email: robitaia@hudson.k12.oh.us
Website: https://hhs.hudson.k12.oh.us/departments/library
Location: Hudson, OH, USA
Phone: (330) 653-1412
Resource repository: https://wakelet.com/@AndrewRobitaille2572

View past newsletters at https://hhs.hudson.k12.oh.us/departments/library/library-newsletters