PICPA (Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants) Resources

The Community Center section of the PICPA website has articles, brochures, and other financial literacy resources related to tax help, money management, choosing a CPA, and other topics. Teachers can download instruction guides and other tools for elementary and high school levels. (There's even a financial compatibility quiz for couples!)

Also, users can download a copy of PICPA's Financial Fitness calendar (which includes a plug for library resources!). Copies are currently available for patrons to pick up at UD.

Teach Parents Tech

The adult kids at Google just launched a new website:  Teach Parents Tech.  The site features 50 videos that you can email to parents or others who need tech support!   It covers topics in five basic categories:  the basics, world wide web, communication, media, and finding information.  (I love that last one--there are videos that teach very useful things like finding driving directions, tracking a flight, and finding restaurants.)

Read all about it in this blog post from Google. 

Future Jobs-O-Matic

The Future Jobs-O-Matic is a new college and career planning tool built by American Public Media's radio show Marketplace.  Using current economic information and projections for next 10 years, over 250 careers are analyzed. Users can find out which fields are growing and shrinking, and which pay the most. It is a slick-looking gadget that is backed up by real data. 

(I was happy to see that, despite people's love of Google and Wikipedia, that the Future Jobs-O-Matic says the field of librarianship will see a small amount of growth in the next 10 years. We're not obsolete!!!)

Court System

Sandra Day O'Connor has been all over the tv the last couple of days touting a new website she's helped develop:

www.ourcourts.org

I got lost wandering through the links on Tribal governments in the US. Prize to the first person who emails me the name of the Penobscot Indian nation chief executive.

Shmoop!

Shmoop is a great new website aimed at helping students with their English and U.S. History assignments. The site has very relevant discussions of the themes of classic books, great summaries of periods and events in history, links to helpful websites, printable cramsheets, and even tools to get students started on their essays. The organization and look of the site is very student-friendly, and everything is free! To find out more, take the Tour de Shmoop. I highly recommend this site. It is not as thorough as some of our databases, but they are adding new content all the time. Also, it is aimed at a teen audience and is written in a very engaging way.