MERIT staff have been working to support school-wide initiatives by creating new websites.   Highlights include:

• The newly formed office, American Indian Curriculum Services web resource for teachers:  http://aics.education.wisc.edu. The site will be a starting point for faculty, staff and students looking for Act 31-related information and materials. Lesson Plans, Content Modules and Bibliographies are all areas that will grow as resources become available.
• The Student Diversity Programs and the Equity and Diversity Committee came together to create the Common Read Program, which is offering a series of discussions relating to Sherman Alexi's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian" and events related to the topic of American Indians. Their new website, http://commonread.education.wisc.edu will help to organize the book discussions by providing visitors with the opportunity to sign up for one of the sessions.

Look for more web highlights in future issues of MERIT news.

The MERIT web development team has been working with the Cooperative Children's Book Center to make some updates to their website. The new updated website was put on-line today.

http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc

Highlights of these updates include text search capabilities for their book database and some enhancements for the podcast section to allow users to subscribe by RSS or iTunes. Additionally, the books discussed in each podcast will be entered into the book database and available as part of the book searching.