3D printers

There are 3D printers on campus that students can use with permission. Students should contact Peter Stupak in the Science & Engineering Department and he will give them the information they need. peter.stupak@raritanval.edu

(email from Alyssa, 11/14)

A Google A Day

I just discovered that if you don't enter any search terms in Google and put your mouse over the I'm feeling lucky button, it swivels like a slot machine and turns up several options, like "I'm feeling hungry" (results are restaurants), "I'm feeling curious" (gives an interesting fact), and several more. "I'm feeling puzzled" brought me to A Google A Day, which gives you a question and then you are supposed to use Google to find the answer. Check it out http://www.agoogleaday.com/#date=2012-03-27. I don't know exactly how it could be used yet but it seems like a really interesting way to engage students with Google!

-Megan

From Apple Pages to Word

A student just showed me how to send a document from Mac's Pages program to an email as a Word document. When in the Pages document, there is a "share" button. You can select to send it as an email, and then from the dialog box that appears, you can select "Word" for the type of document that is sent.

New York Times paywall

Observer has an article describing ways to get around the New York Times paywall, if ever a student is looking for an article.

http://observer.com/2013/02/5-ways-you-can-still-get-around-the-new-york-times-paywall-2/ 

We also have New York Times in a Proquest database with no embargo so articles published in the print "late edition" can be found there, and NYT Historical database goes all the way back to 1923.

http://ezp.raritanval.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/newsstand/publication/11561/?accountid=13438 

Google Government Search Discontinued

I just learned that the Google government search site, google.com/unclesam, has been discontinued by Google! The article at http://govinfo.sla.org/2011/06/08/goodbye-google-uncle-sam/  gives some of the explanation. It also refers users to http://www.USA.gov which includes a search engine that searches indexes federal, state, and local government information and is not limited to searching only the .gov domain.

-Megan

MyLabsPlus

The RVCC MyLabsPlus website is:

http://www.raritanval.mylabsplus.com

Printer error message: Change paper size or type...

If the first floor printers are throwing an error message prompting you to change the size or type of paper before printing a document that's been released, check the Settings - Paper Menu - Paper Size/Type menu and make sure Letter and Plain Paper are selected for the tray listed in the error message.

A recent ticket to MIS revealed that this setting can be accidentally changed by students--and, luckily, easily changed back. 

Diane

GPA Calculator

The end of the semester sometimes brings students to us who are trying to model their GPA and grades they need to earn for future semesters. This calculator is very simple and straightforward to use: http://gpacalculator.net/college-gpa-calculator/ 

There are also links to GPA calculators on the Student Services - First Year Experience page on the RVCC website, but in my opinion they aren't as user friendly: http://www.raritanval.edu/studentserv/fye/planningguide/support.html?terms=gpa%20calculator 

Diane

Timer to insert in PPT

Sometimes I do activities in class that I want to only run for a specific amount of time and I found a great, simple website to run a big timer on that I thought I'd share with you.

http://e.ggtimer.com


You can take the above URL and add /#minutes for whatever amount of time you want the timer to run.

For example:

http://e.ggtimer.com/5minutes

http://e.ggtimer.com/2minutes

http://e.ggtimer.com/30seconds

If you insert the link into PPT, you can simply click the link and you will be taken to the URL where the timer starts automatically. There are other timers that can be embedded directly into PPT, but I found this one to be the easiest to implement.

Enjoy!

Megan

Thank you to Diane for sharing handouts from a recent Lexis Nexis legal searching webinar. I've created a new folder in the Reference drive called "Legal Research" and saved these two documents as well as a few others in that folder for everyone to access. The folder includes

• Lexis Nexis commands at a glance
• Legal Concepts and Definitions
• Melanie Morris' "Brick and Mortar" research assignment for the online Legal Research & Writing course
• Maria DeFilipis' assignment for Role of the Paralegal
• The Legal Research @ RVCC guide that we used during our legal research training session a few semesters ago

Tax Forms

Our library does not provide printed tax forms any longer, but the 1040, 1040A, and 1040EZ as well as instruction sheets are available from the Bridgewater Public Library (and probably most other public libraries).

They are also available online at https://www.irs.gov/Forms-&-Pubs.

NJ forms are available online at http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/forms.shtml.