Like most school districts at this time of year, the Baltimore County Public School System (BCPS) is a beehive of activity as teachers, students and parents plan for graduations, put the final touches on summer reading lists, and look forward to “downtime.” The BCPS web site and the Office of Library Information Services web site are busy crossroads that report on opportunities and accomplishments by and for a distributed community of over 200 schools. Looking for ways to better support appropriate online resource selection as BCPS works to align assessment, teaching, professional development and online resources was what led Della Curtis, BPCS Coordinator of Library Information Services, to consider adding the NSDL toolbar to all computers in her school district. In addition, the NSDL link and toolbar were added to the recently designed BCPS Maryland High School Assessment Portal - an initiative to bring together exemplary resources to support student learning of the Maryland Voluntary State Curriculum in tested areas such as Biology, Algebra, English, and Government. The NSDL Toolbar is a convenient way to keep access to the National Science Digital Library handy while browsing the Internet.

Ms. Curtis recently presented the advantages of disseminating the NSDL toolbar to the BCPS superintendent’s executive leadership group. The toolbar provides school districts with both uniform access to all NSDL collections on school computers by adding an NSDL search box to browsers, while also ensuring that teachers and students have access to high-quality STEM subject-specific Pathways web sites.

Download the NSDL Toolbar here.