Dear Colleagues,

SchoolRooms Basic is now live on the INFOhio home page! Thanks to the efforts of many Ohio educators, INFOhio staff, and the cooperation of SirsiDynix Corp., the entire Ohio PreK-12 community has access to this abridged version through the 2007-2008 school year without fees, including home access. For now, ALL users will need to use INFOhio’s Core Collection username and password to enter SchoolRooms Basic (SRB).

SchoolRooms Basic is a discovery tool for high quality Web sites. More than 22,000 sites have been selected by Ohio educators to support Academic Content Standards. In addition, the SRB portal leads to more than 3 million related sites. Over the next few months, INFOhio Tech Support plans to add federated searching for the Core Collection for everyone and OPAC searching for INFOhio automated schools. Stay tuned!

To learn more about INFOhio’s version of SchoolRooms™ and read answers to some initial FAQs, click on the About link in the SRB main menu. SRB updates and additional resources will be added to these pages, as they become available. Password protected documents require the same password used for INFOhio Toolkit items. To receive a password, contact your Instructional Technology Center or e-mail central@infohio.org.

For now, please test SchoolRooms Basic and encourage your patrons to do the same. Report any SRB technical difficulties to your ITC provider in the usual manner. For issues with SRB content, procedures are in place to report broken links, suggest new links and provide feedback; note the Help Evaluate section in SRB’s right frame.

Please note the OH!Teach button on the INFOhio home page has been replaced with our SRB button; OH!Teach remains available on our Other Resources page. INFOhio’s SchoolRooms Basic project team weighed the value of OH!Teach and SRB, especially Children & Young Adult Literature, Educator's Guide and Librarian's Guide, each with Rooms for Elementary, Middle School and High School. Since OH!Teach has not been revised for several months, we think Rooms will be much more useful and up-to-date. I hope you have time to explore the new Rooms and concur.

INFOhio is using the remainder of the 2007-2008 school year to evaluate SchoolRooms Basic, along with INFOsearch and New CAT. Thank you for your help as we add products and services to INFOhio!

Sincerely,
Theresa M. Fredericka
INFOhio Executive Director