World Book Kids...Well, I wanted to learn some more about wombats but they are only briefly mentioned in an article about Australia. I know wombats aren't the most popular mammal in the world, but they are really interesting! So picking up the pieces of my disappointed heart I looked up porcupines instead. I've always been tempted to stop on the highway when I see one that has been hit to take a few of its quills, but I've never had the guts to follow through. I was actually a bit disappointed in the article on porcupines though. The picture was an old, faded drawing and other than mentioning they spend a lot of time in trees, that's all the habitat information that was given.
World Book Student pulls it out! I found an article on wombats! Hey, wait a minute...they're marsupials! I didn't know that! I'd always read they were a lot like a large badger. The information in the article was much more thorough than the "Kids" edition. So onto porcupines...also a much more detailed article with a real photograph this time. They even threw a little scientific classification (Latin!) in there for good measure!
World Book Advanced didn't disappoint with information on Luxembourg! I especially like the way the article is outlined on the left side of the page for easy navigation. The "Facts in Brief" table was very nice. I think this would be very useful for someone doing a report. Also interesting is that Reagan and JFK seem to have the most presidential papers mentioning Luxembourg.
In World Book Explorer I browsed until I got to an article on the National Park system. I did notice that you can translate the article into many different languages. While it notes that the translation won't be perfect, a general sense of the information will be intact. I tried translating the article I found into Arabic...I think some of the text gets cut off on the right side of the screen. I don' t know if this is a big problem. Not having the ability to read Arabic but knowing it's reads from right to left, it looks abrupt to me.
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Summer Post17 years ago
1 comment:
Hi, library chick! Welcome to the E-Resources Library Challenge! Thanks for your good comments on WB School Edition. You discovered a lot of what WB articles offer. Please note that all WB modules have translations, read-aloud, and double-click dictionary. You're right about the Arabic translation. It does look cut off a bit on the right, but hard for a non-Arabic reader to tell for sure. You are also right that Kids is very basic and does not get too specific. Young children are able to navigate & read the articles themselves. Details and more specific entries are in Student and Advanced. I encourage you to try Kids' World of Animals feature, though it does not include either wombats or porcupines. :( Thanks for sharing your observations!
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