Mexico's Drug War

Katel, Peter. "Mexico's Future: Can the country's new president stop the drug cartels?." CQ Researcher 26 Oct. 2012. Following years of grisly drug-related violence, Mexico's next president, Enrique Peña Nieto, is hinting that he will adopt a new anti-crime strategy when he takes office Dec. 1. Instead of using a military-style offensive to kill or capture the leaders of Mexico's drug cartels

Healthcare Careers Pathways Lab

Short link for this post

Useful CBC Links

• Angel  (This is the direct link to Angel where you use the first 5 letters of your last name as the password. You can also login using the MyCBC student ID and PIN from CBC's homepage, top left corner.)
• Tutor & Writing Center
• etutoring.org: click on the red arrow to login and select "Northwest eTutoring Consortium", then "Columbia Basin College". Read the instructions on the right side of the login.
• Paying for College
• CBC's Nursing Assistant program (7 Hour HIV/AIDS Training available free at the CBC Library)
• CBC's Phlebotomy program

Social Media and Politics

Price, Tom. "Social Media and Politics: Do Facebook and Twitter Influence Voters?" CQ Researcher 12 Oct. 2012: 865-88. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. Social media, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, have become major battlegrounds in this year's elections.

Legalizing Marijuana

This post offers links to issues of the CQ Researcher, additional articles from EBSCOhost and ProQuest (including newspaper articles on the 2012 Washington initiative), as well as print and online books in our collection.

Quotations - Speech

This post is designed to help speech students locate, use and cite quotation resources both in print and online.

Distracted Driving

Drive Safely Work Week is Oct. 1-5, 2012

Hosansky, David. "Distracted Driving: Should driver texting and cellphone use be banned?" CQ Researcher 4 May 2012. Drivers have long tried to manage any number of distractions ranging from eating a snack and reading a map to dealing with unruly children in the backseat and putting on makeup. But with the increasing popularity of cellphones and texting, distracted driving has emerged as a central concern of safety experts. Studies indicate that distractions are involved in more than 5,000 traffic fatalities every year. Most states have enacted laws to restrict texting or talking on handheld cellphones, and policymakers face calls for a near-total ban even on hands-free communications devices — including those that are built into the dashboards of new cars and heavily marketed by automakers. But even if more restrictive laws were passed, many motorists would find it hard to set aside the devices they have come to rely upon to make business and personal calls and also to check websites or update their Facebook pages. From the CQ Researcher. Reprinted with permission from CQ Press.

Websites:
distraction.gov - Official U.S. Government Website for Distracted Driving. U.S. Dept. of Transportation. Natl. Highway Safety Administration. Offers news, facts, research and an overview of state laws.

Career/Occupation/Employment Resources

CBC Resources

CareerBeam 
 This service is one of the benefit of joining the CBC Alumni Association, which is free to current students. CareerBeam "includes a job-search database, resume and interview resource center, and a user-friendly program that helps you determine your career goals while offering helpful steps to achieve them. CareerBeam includes a database of millions of current openings across the country and world."

Become a Member of Alumni, Students & Friends

CareerBeam Training Video  (It takes a minute to load and there is a delay. At 12 seconds the video screen shows.)

Ferguson’s Career Guidance Center  provides detailed job and industry profiles, advice on job-hunting and career skills, résumé writing advice and samples, short videos on a wide variety of related topics, college search and job finder tools, and more.  

Websites
CareerOneStop - Sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Labor, pulls together a wide range of career information, labor statistics, job postings, and workforce services. Allows you to build a customized occupation profile listing skills, wages, outlook, education. If you don't have one picked out, you can select an occupation from among the fastest growing, highest paying, or search for the best match using the skills profiler. This should at least be your first stop, since it incorporates or links to most of the information available in the sites listed below.

https://fortress.wa.gov/esd/employmentdata/ - Employment and economic information: Data and analysis of

Alcohol Abuse

Price, Tom. "Alcohol Abuse: Can underage drinking be curbed?" CQ Researcher 8 June 2012. Americans are abusing alcohol less than in the past with one exception: college students, who drink more and binge drink more often than nonstudents of similar age. And alcohol continues to extract a high toll from those who abuse it at any age, killing 80,000 Americans a year and draining more than $220 billion from the economy. Although high school students drink and binge less, bingeing accounts for 90 percent of the alcohol consumed by teens who drink. Health experts also worry about the effects of new products, especially flavored alcoholic drinks, which seem to encourage young women and girls to drink and drink more. To combat alcohol abuse, many educational institutions, community organizations and government agencies are stepping up efforts to promote abstinence among the young and responsible drinking by adults who do imbibe. From the CQ Researcher. Reprinted with permission from CQ Press.

Books: We added several books recently on alcohol abuse, including Getting wasted : why college students drink too much and party so hard by Thomas Vander Ven (click linked title to check availability).


links updated - 5/21/2013 cs

Compass Test Prep

CBC Placement Test Web Page

CBC Library Books

• Answers explained : arriving at the answers to the COMPASS math placement test sample questions / by Jill Hacker, 2009
• COMPASS exam secrets study guide : your key to exam success / by Mometrix Media LLC., 2010
• All the Math You'll Ever Need: A Self-Teaching Guide / by Steve Slavin, 1999
• Quick algebra review : a self-teaching guide / by Selby, Peter H.; Slavin, Stephen L., 1993
• Basic math and pre-algebra / by Jerry Bobrow
• Cliffs math review for standardized tests/ by Jerry Bobrow
• Barron's SAT 1 : how to prepare for the SAT 1

Online Practice Tests

• Sample questions on the official COMPASS website.
• www.khanacademy.org (Good math videos)
• Johnson County Community College Prepare for COMPASS Math main page
  1. Pre-algebra Review from Johnson County Community College
  2. Algebra Review from Johnson County Community College
  3. Advanced Algebra Review from Johnson County Community College
• www.compasstestquestions.com 
• COMPASS Writing & Reading practice tests from Gainesville State College
• COMPASS/ESL Sample Test Questions: Reading (From ACT's website, 2004)
• COMPASS/ESL Sample Test Questions: Math (From ACT's website, 2004)
• COMPASS/ESL Sample Test Questions: Writing (From ACT's website, 2004)
• The online test prep database called Learning Express Library available through the Mid-Columbia Library does NOT have a COMPASS practice test, but it has high school review courses and tests on Math, Reading, Vocabulary, and Writing. It also has a College Preparation section that includes tests, such as "ACT", "SAT", "TOEFL", etc.
• As a CBC student, you can get a Mid-Columbia Library card for free;
• When you sign up, choose a password for your library account;
• Then go to the database Learning Express Library;
• To login, the username should be your 14-digit Mid-Columbia Library ID card number and the password should be the one you chose for your account.
• Once logged in, click on either the "High School" section or the "College Preparation" section to practice. 

info updated 10/5/2012 yy

Links updated 5/21/2013 cs

CS 101 - Computers in Society

Additional Current Topic Source: All Tech Considered:NPR

Topic Suggestions - CQ Researcher

Big Data and Privacy - Should the use of personal information be restricted?
Blog Explosion
Combating Plagiarism - Is the Internet causing more students to copy?
Computer Hacking
Computers and Medicine
Controlling the Internet
Cyberbullying
Cyber-Crime
Cyberpolitics
Cyber-Predators
Cybersecurity February 26, 2010 - Are U.S. military and civilian computer systems safe?
Cybersecurity September 26, 2003 - How vulnerable is the U.S. to cyberwarfare?
Cyber Socializing - Are Internet sites like MySpace potentially dangerous? (2006)
Distance Learning
Distracted Driving - Should driver texting and cellphone use be banned?
Future of Journalism - Can the Internet fill the reporting gaps caused by the decline of newspapers?
Google's Dominance
Government Surveillance
Identity Theft
Impact of the Internet on Thinking
Improving Cybersecurity
Internet Accuracy - Is information on the Web reliable?
Internet Regulation - Are stiffer rules needed to protect web content?
Internet Shopping - Should states require online retailers to collect sales taxes?
Libraries and the Internet - Are filters needed to block pornography?
Online Privacy - do Americans need better protection?
Privacy in Peril
Future of Recycling (e-waste)
Regulating the New Economy (digital economy)
Social Media and Politics - Do Facebook and Twitter influence voters?
Social Networking - Are online social networks eroding privacy? (Sept. 2010)
Television's Future (broadcast vs. podcast)
Video Games - Do they have educational value?
Voting Controversies (electronic voting machines)

Global Issues In Context - Portal Pages
Cyberbullying
Cyberwarfare
Identity Theft
Internet Control and Security
Virtual Currencies

Other resources:
Books in ebrary

FOLDOC free on-line dictionary of computing

Search for this in Oxford Reference or browse Mathematics & Computing titles

Sample Search for Books
"su:Computer OR su:Technology AND su:social" - 203 results as of 5/21/2013
“su:Computers and civilization”  - 47 results as of 5/21/2013


updated -May 2015