1-2. I overlooked the "Show all" option previously. It's interesting to see what publications are available in each field. Some of the reference books listed were outdated. For example, I searched for wind energy and GVRL came up with 15 matches. Only 4 of them were less than 4 years old. However, although the type of sort defaults to "relevance", it can be changed to publication date. Students at our school would need to be careful about which which reference books they'd use, as our English teachers don't encourage articles more than 4 years old.
I went into an article on wind energy in Alternative Energy. I liked the related subjects list that came up off to the left side: wind power, windmills, turbines, electric measurement, etc.
Wow! I wish that last spring I'd known what I know now about GVRL. One of the suggested research paper topics our Senior English teacher gave her students was on alternative energy. I brushed over GVRL with our seniors, but wasn't really impressed/informed about it, and I'm sure that showed to the students. I'll be more positive about its potential this year.
I went into the article about Wind Energy, and it was incredibly thorough. It explained what wind energy was, the history of windmills in Europe and North America, and the decline and revival of windmills. It also went into the environmental, societal, and economical impacts of windmills, and then highlighted those impacts for wind turbines as well. It discussed the benefits and drawbacks of both windmills and wind turbines. I enjoyed scrolling through the pictures before sinking my teeth into the article.
It appears that one can have the text read aloud and follow along below. Articles can be translated into 11 different languages, but I couldn't find a way for them to be read outloud.
I was the least informed about this online database. Once again, I appreciate this class being offered in the summer when there is a little more time to explore.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Week 3: ProQuest
1. I like the format of this online database. It has even helped students that hit a dead end on research papers to come up with different subtopics. I like how you can put in a broad term and ProQuest offers ways to focus/narrow the search. For example, I did an initial search on "bullying". ProQuest came up with 4,441 articles, and suggested I narrow the topic by the following subtopics: Bullying and Children and Youth, Bullying and School Violence, Bullying and School Discipline, Bullying and Students, Bullying and Behavior, Bullying and work environment. I then chose Bullying and School Violence (201 articles), and it offered to narrow my topic further with: School Discipline, Children and Youth, Student Behavior, Students, Studies, Nonfiction, School Safety, Secondary Students. When I chose School Discipline, ProQuest narrowed my search to 29 articles. When I chose School Safety, 4 articles were left.
I never noticed the date range before. Our English teachers and students will appreciate this option as they have parameters on acceptable dates of data.
2. The Publications Tab will provide a nice visual when introducing this database to English classes or reviewing its potential with them. Rather than just saying that ProQuest has 1,700+ magazines/journals and newspapers, it will be nice to actually go into the list of publications and scroll down to show the data bank.
I typed in "Library" and it came up with 24 matches. I went into Young Adult Library Services. I went into the Spring 2010 edition and it gave me ways to narrow my topic as well. Neat! What I saw was a feast for the eyes. There was an article on "Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults: It's All About the Popular". We've been trying to come up with different ways to display the books besides the obvious: mysteries, science fiction, etc. I need to look more into the PPYA themed lists. This could save us a lot of time, and give us a foundation to build on.
Another article that caught my eye was "YALSA Announces 2010 Literary Award Winners and Selected Booklists." 2010's PPYA themes were listed there:
I never noticed the date range before. Our English teachers and students will appreciate this option as they have parameters on acceptable dates of data.
2. The Publications Tab will provide a nice visual when introducing this database to English classes or reviewing its potential with them. Rather than just saying that ProQuest has 1,700+ magazines/journals and newspapers, it will be nice to actually go into the list of publications and scroll down to show the data bank.
I typed in "Library" and it came up with 24 matches. I went into Young Adult Library Services. I went into the Spring 2010 edition and it gave me ways to narrow my topic as well. Neat! What I saw was a feast for the eyes. There was an article on "Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults: It's All About the Popular". We've been trying to come up with different ways to display the books besides the obvious: mysteries, science fiction, etc. I need to look more into the PPYA themed lists. This could save us a lot of time, and give us a foundation to build on.
Another article that caught my eye was "YALSA Announces 2010 Literary Award Winners and Selected Booklists." 2010's PPYA themes were listed there:
- Bodies: They come in all shapes, sizes and abilities... love it, or hate it, you only have one body.
- Change your world
- Hard Knock Life
- Twist on Tales
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Week 2: SIRS Issues Researcher
1. Our MS and HS English teachers already value and use SIRS Issues Researcher. I am usually responsible for doing a presentation in their classes before students start researching. My point being, I thought I was pretty familiar with SIRS Issues Researcher, but it looks like they have added some new features since this spring!!! I'm glad I noticed now! (Yet another plus from taking this class.)
- The interactive feature is new. I went into a handful of topics to see if it was just for the "Your Top Ten Pro vs. Con Leading Issues", and it appeared to be there for all, if not many. Our English teachers will love this addition.
- I've never gone into the "more" under Topic Overview. Is this a new feature, or did I overlook it before? This is gold. I love the further research offered, the organizations, primary sources, and key figures.
- The research tools continue to be informative: timeline, global impact, statistics.
- Just out of curiosity, do you know how often the Top 10 Leading Issues are changed?
2. The Curriculum Pathfinders is news to me. There was quite a range of topics: Math, Health, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, and Fine Arts. I went into Algebra and clicked on the first link: Algebasics: Show Me How, Now. This is exactly what our neighbor is looking for. He came over the other day and told me that he was contemplating a college career at age 40. He only had one year of algebra in HS, nothing since and was looking for something to give him a taste. This link has 16 sections, ranging from the basics of algebra to quadratics and applications. Once you click into a section, you have numerous examples to choose from (up to 20 from what I could see). It talks you through the problem/equation, giving you the visual of the work as you listen. Neat! I am adding Curriculum Pathfinders to my list of things to tell teachers about this fall. For example, I can see our MS Math teacher using the link I summarized above.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Week One: World Book Encyclopedia
Whew! I've had trouble getting to this point... The Blog component may be my biggest challenge, not familiarizing myself with and navigating through the library resources! Thanks, Julie, for helping me get to this point.
1. I chose dolphins, as they are one of my favorite animals. As a young child, I watched them "lead" ships into Port Aransas Bay in Texas. I found 3 pictures, 3 videos, and 13 articles in World Book Kids. There was a wide array of articles: dolphins, porpoises, Dan Marino, poetry, Atlantic Ocean, etc. The main article was 9-paragraphs long. I think it would be interesting to show students a list of words such as the following, and have them predict and explain which words they think they would come up for a given animal. (Dolphin example: Atlantic Ocean, Missouri River, jellyfish, porpoises, mammals, reptiles, Marino, Brett Favre, etc.) Then give them time to go to the site and actually do the search. Were they right?I see immediate applications for our 3rd graders as they already do a computer-based research project on an animal of choice. They could step right into the related web sites found on the left. I also liked having the option to hear text read aloud. It was helpful to be able to double-click on a word to define it, too. Younger students will think this is cool!
2. There was much more information on dolphins in World Book student. There were 66 articles instead of 13, 7 pictures instead of 3, 4 videos instead of 1, and 29 paragraphs instead of 9. There was more "meat" in the articles. I liked the main sections outlined on the left side. I enjoyed poking around the tables. I found the table on animal intelligence particularly interesting. Finding dolphins on that list didn't surprise me, but did you know that elephants and pigs are the best problem solvers among the hoofed animals? I didn't!
3. I chose Bangladesh as my country. The left side had maps, tables, sounds, historical maps, related web sites, and much more. World Book Advanced is impressive. Our high school English teachers require students to use the Citation Builder found here for research papers. Our fourth grade teachers will enjoy the "Explore South Dakota" for Social Studies. They do a Wax Museum of famous SD people, so the biographies will prove helpful. There are wonderful graphs of things like average January and July temperatures, which I will be pointing out to both our elementary and MS math teachers.
4. World Book Discover can help patrons who aren't good English readers in a number of ways. Words can be defined by double-clicking on them. Text can be translated into other language and/or read aloud at different speeds. I can see that I need to do a better job of educating our teachers as to what is available in the line of online references, thanks to South Dakota State Library.
Is it still possible to have SD State Library Staff come and do an inservice for individual schools? If so, please refresh my memory: who would we contact? How much time would you recommend for such an endeavor?
1. I chose dolphins, as they are one of my favorite animals. As a young child, I watched them "lead" ships into Port Aransas Bay in Texas. I found 3 pictures, 3 videos, and 13 articles in World Book Kids. There was a wide array of articles: dolphins, porpoises, Dan Marino, poetry, Atlantic Ocean, etc. The main article was 9-paragraphs long. I think it would be interesting to show students a list of words such as the following, and have them predict and explain which words they think they would come up for a given animal. (Dolphin example: Atlantic Ocean, Missouri River, jellyfish, porpoises, mammals, reptiles, Marino, Brett Favre, etc.) Then give them time to go to the site and actually do the search. Were they right?I see immediate applications for our 3rd graders as they already do a computer-based research project on an animal of choice. They could step right into the related web sites found on the left. I also liked having the option to hear text read aloud. It was helpful to be able to double-click on a word to define it, too. Younger students will think this is cool!
2. There was much more information on dolphins in World Book student. There were 66 articles instead of 13, 7 pictures instead of 3, 4 videos instead of 1, and 29 paragraphs instead of 9. There was more "meat" in the articles. I liked the main sections outlined on the left side. I enjoyed poking around the tables. I found the table on animal intelligence particularly interesting. Finding dolphins on that list didn't surprise me, but did you know that elephants and pigs are the best problem solvers among the hoofed animals? I didn't!
3. I chose Bangladesh as my country. The left side had maps, tables, sounds, historical maps, related web sites, and much more. World Book Advanced is impressive. Our high school English teachers require students to use the Citation Builder found here for research papers. Our fourth grade teachers will enjoy the "Explore South Dakota" for Social Studies. They do a Wax Museum of famous SD people, so the biographies will prove helpful. There are wonderful graphs of things like average January and July temperatures, which I will be pointing out to both our elementary and MS math teachers.
4. World Book Discover can help patrons who aren't good English readers in a number of ways. Words can be defined by double-clicking on them. Text can be translated into other language and/or read aloud at different speeds. I can see that I need to do a better job of educating our teachers as to what is available in the line of online references, thanks to South Dakota State Library.
Is it still possible to have SD State Library Staff come and do an inservice for individual schools? If so, please refresh my memory: who would we contact? How much time would you recommend for such an endeavor?
Week 2: SIRS Discoverer
1. Wow! Searching for dolphins on SIRS Discoverer definitely brought different results than World Book. I think it would make our 3rd-graders animal reports more three-dimensional if they not only looked up the usuals (habitat, size, etc.), but also if they looked up and summarized an article on SIRS Discoverer. I'll have to suggest it to our two 3rd grade teachers. They're both really open-minded. (My list of who I need to inform about what is getting quite long! Nice problem, though!)
I searched for information on dolphins again, and the first article I came to was "A Superhero of the Sea". This was a very high-interest article. As I scrolled down further, I was delighted to find suggestions of what to do before, during and after reading the article. Discussion questions and writing prompts were also available. One of the neatest things I discovered was "Sentence Chef Presents: How to Write a Paragraph". A topic sentence based on the article had been filled in, and there were four additional lines, two for supporting sentences and two for detailed sentences. Hints were given under each. I sure wish there was an option of having these articles read aloud by the computer. During computer class, students could work together and read/listen to an article and then fill out the Paragraph diagram together. This will still work, just without the read-aloud feature. The color-coded reading levels will prove helpful too.
2. I again chose Bangladesh for my country. I found a map of Bangladesh, which offered a link to an article about Clinton's visit there. There was information on its geography and weather. It not only gave its size in miles/km squared, but also compared it to something more familiar (about the size of Wisconsin). There was information about its economy, government, and history. Population was listed, as well as how ethnic groups, religions, life expectancy, etc. broke down within that population. Easy, moderate, and challenging graphic organizers were provided. I will be sharing these with elementary, MS and HS Social Studies teachers.
I went into "Maps of the World" and found all sorts of maps: outline maps, maps with time zones of the world, etc. The time zone map had a link to an article about how time zones work. Neat! A teacher could do a scavenger hunt. Display the outline of a country and have students look for it in the outline maps.
I explored "Educators Resources". I will be sharing the elementary workbook with our computer teachers. It would be nice to let our elementary students play with these resources so it's not so overwhelming when they move into research papers in MS. I also liked the table on SIRS vs. Google. The Analyzing Graphs and Charts sheet is something that our teachers will find helpful.
I searched for information on dolphins again, and the first article I came to was "A Superhero of the Sea". This was a very high-interest article. As I scrolled down further, I was delighted to find suggestions of what to do before, during and after reading the article. Discussion questions and writing prompts were also available. One of the neatest things I discovered was "Sentence Chef Presents: How to Write a Paragraph". A topic sentence based on the article had been filled in, and there were four additional lines, two for supporting sentences and two for detailed sentences. Hints were given under each. I sure wish there was an option of having these articles read aloud by the computer. During computer class, students could work together and read/listen to an article and then fill out the Paragraph diagram together. This will still work, just without the read-aloud feature. The color-coded reading levels will prove helpful too.
2. I again chose Bangladesh for my country. I found a map of Bangladesh, which offered a link to an article about Clinton's visit there. There was information on its geography and weather. It not only gave its size in miles/km squared, but also compared it to something more familiar (about the size of Wisconsin). There was information about its economy, government, and history. Population was listed, as well as how ethnic groups, religions, life expectancy, etc. broke down within that population. Easy, moderate, and challenging graphic organizers were provided. I will be sharing these with elementary, MS and HS Social Studies teachers.
I went into "Maps of the World" and found all sorts of maps: outline maps, maps with time zones of the world, etc. The time zone map had a link to an article about how time zones work. Neat! A teacher could do a scavenger hunt. Display the outline of a country and have students look for it in the outline maps.
I explored "Educators Resources". I will be sharing the elementary workbook with our computer teachers. It would be nice to let our elementary students play with these resources so it's not so overwhelming when they move into research papers in MS. I also liked the table on SIRS vs. Google. The Analyzing Graphs and Charts sheet is something that our teachers will find helpful.
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