Education

It’s never too early to read to your baby.  Accelerate their brain development in 15 minutes a day.  Reading aloud creates everlasting bonds; builds memories, engagement and brains!  Your example demonstrates reading is important, pleasurable and valued.  More than one in three children arrive at kindergarten without the skills necessary for lifelong learning.  Research shows reading aloud is the single most important thing you can do to help a child prepare for reading and learning.  All it takes is 15 minutes a day—anywhere, anytime.  Take the 21 Day Challenge and make reading to your child a BIG part of your day.

Explore and stay informed on local and national topics, people and events in areas such as business, health, education, jobs and careers, political and social issues and more. Features a wide variety of credible, vetted news sources spanning the U.S. Available remotely 24/7 on any device.

*Student ID numbers (also known as lunch numbers) will not work for accessing this resource outside the library.  Contact the library and ask for assistance.

Searching for books with a corresponding AR Quiz is easy with AR BookFinder. Students, teachers, parents, and librarians can search in English or Spanish using criteria such as ATOS book level (or ATOS 2000), interest level, title, author, fiction/nonfiction, subject, award-winners, state lists, CCSS Exemplars, and more. There is no easier way to find books that are both appropriate and interesting to individual students. With more than 160,000 AR Quizzes—over 70,000 nonfiction—kids will never run out of books to read.

Plan for college and learn how to fund your education.

Search full-text articles on local news, issues, events, people and more from current and archived issues of The Daily Courier. Available remotely 24/7 on any device.

*Student ID numbers (also known as lunch numbers) will not work for accessing this resource outside the library.  Contact the library and ask for assistance.

Digital Library on American Slavery (DLAS) is a freely available and searchable database focused on bringing to light the names of enslaved individuals from court petitions, historical newspapers, and deed records held by Register of Deeds offices across North Carolina.

Driving Tests includes free tests, written specifically based on the state DMV materials, and is the only site of its kind to include accessibility tools that allow users to hear selections read aloud, make them into MP3s, translate pages into other languages, magnify text, and mask sections of the screen for greater visibility on driving practice tests.

Research on primary, secondary, and higher education, as well as special education, home schooling, adult education, and hundreds of related topics.

This easy-to-use curriculum and reference resource delivers one of the largest general reference collections of periodical and digital media content designed specifically for schools and libraries of all kinds, as well as additional subject-based material.

The application that opens the door to the federal student financial aid process.

For more than a decade, the GCFLearnFree.org program has helped millions around the world learn the essential skills they need to live and work in the 21st century. From Microsoft Office and email to reading, math, and more, GCFLearnFree.org offers 125 tutorials, including more than 1,100 lessons, videos, and interactives, completely free.

The Just for Kids Streaming Collection gives children—and their parents—a thoroughly kid-safe, advertisement-free media platform they can freely explore and enjoy.

About LearningExpress Library: Organized into targeted learning centers, LearningExpress Library Complete supports those looking to improve core academic skills, pass a high school equivalency test, prepare for college, join the military, obtain occupational certification, find a job, change careers, become a U.S. citizen and much more. Learning centers contain practice tests, interactive tutorials, e-books, articles and flashcards.
About PrepSTEP Academic: Whether they are looking to improve core academic skills, score higher on college placement tests, explore careers, prepare for occupational exams or build workplace skills, students can achieve their goals using PrepSTEP Academic.

LearningExpress Library Complete and PrepSTEP Academic require individual user accounts; the first screen you will see when you access this resource asks for a username and password, even from within the library building. It is easy to create your own account with just an email address and password.

A Lexile measure is a valuable piece of information about either an individual's reading ability or the difficulty of a text, like a book or magazine article. The Lexile measure is shown as a number with an "L" after it — 880L is 880 Lexile.

Selected statistical data from the NCDPI on students, personnel and finances.

Specific DPI goals and objectives for classroom subjects and grade levels for North Carolina.

The purpose of the Battle of the Books program is to encourage reading by all students at the middle school level. Students, regardless of ability, are exposed to quality literature representing a variety of literary styles and viewpoints by prominent authors in the area of young adult literature. The game format creates interest and excitement inreading. Through the fun an d excitement of the competition, students improve reading skills, mature in their choices of reading materials, and acquire a broader knowledgebase. Even during the height of the competition, students and coaches should remember that the goal is to READ, not necessarily to win!

Open Education North Carolina Collection contains free, open textbooks that have been curated for the most frequently taught courses across North Carolina's 2 and 4-year colleges and universities. Faculty can adopt these open educational resources (OER) to save their students money and lower the overall cost of higher education.

An award-winning, cloud-based information literacy solution that enables educators and librarians to guide students through research projects efficiently.

The site includes population, economic, and income data as well as county profiles and rankings.