Just clicking around...
I'm something of a modern day hippy and decided to click into "Endangered Species" under the Environment section. This particular title has three volumes. Professionally I'm not sure how I would use this, because even though libraries have been drastically reducing staff numbers over the last year or so, I'm not sure we qualify as an endangered species. However, I did read an article this morning on CNN.com about giant catfish that could face extinction if the Mekong River is dammed as a power source. It seems that its habitat has been threatened in 2003 due to slated dynamited navigation channel improvements. Other than the standard habitat and life cycle information about the giant catfish, I learned that there are villagers in Northern Thailand who believe that catfish are sacred. Now they must be crazy because catfish are the most ugly fish I have every encountered in my life. I appreciated reading more about the giant catfish and I hope that there doesn't have to be an updated entry on them because they are even more endangered.
Basically Searching...
Since I don't know what foods have zinc in them, I thought I might start with searching for answers to that question. My search resulted in one useful article that told me that the best food to find zinc in are "lamb, beef, leafy grains, root vegetables such as potatoes and carrots, shellfish, and organ meats such as liver or kidneys."*
I then looked up an article on Hindu gods because while wracking my brain for a question, I realized I could remember how to spell Shiva (random, I know). The article I found told me all about Devi, the wife of Shiva. Devi has numerous other names and incarnations including Kali, which was familiar from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I tried the Read Speaker feature for this article....when it came to the pronunciations in parentheses I had to laugh. Half of the time the reader pronounced them differently than in the main article or spelled out part of the pronunciation. So I wouldn't say that was entirely helpful, but I wasn't expecting perfection.
*Brody, Tom, and Samuel Uretsky. "Minerals." The Gale Encyclopedia of Children's Health: Infancy through Adolescence. Ed. Kristine Krapp and Jeffrey Wilson. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 1186-1188. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 28 July 2010.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
ProQuest
My husband and I are in the process of purchasing our first house. So my first search was for "home ownership." I checked the "full text documents only" box to narrow my results. I was hoping for a few articles about tips about what kinds of inspections to have done, hidden costs to watch out for, etc. With the current state of our economy and the concurrent housing crisis, I should have known I wouldn't get anything useful. After 10 pages of nothing that I was looking for, I decided there wouldn't be much to blog about.
My next search was for "adolescent brain." This yielded much better results (in terms of usefulness). I just love everything about ProQuest: how it helps me expand or narrow my search (Suggested Topics About), how I can take my search results and save them for later by emailing them, the citation builder, etc. Though I've never used it, I appreciate the RSS feed and Alert features. I find ProQuest easy to navigate and well laid out. I've also used the Advanced search many times to look for book reviews. A shout out goes to Jean Peterson in Tech Services for showing me how to do that my second day on the job!
I've used the Publications tab many times to search for a specific article I've seen in a print version of a magazine. For the heck of it I tracked down the issue of American Libraries that came out right before the 2006 annual conference in New Orleans. My mom wrote a French Quarter restaurant guide for that issue and I always enjoy reading it. Maybe that's cheating, but I don't care :)
My next search was for "adolescent brain." This yielded much better results (in terms of usefulness). I just love everything about ProQuest: how it helps me expand or narrow my search (Suggested Topics About), how I can take my search results and save them for later by emailing them, the citation builder, etc. Though I've never used it, I appreciate the RSS feed and Alert features. I find ProQuest easy to navigate and well laid out. I've also used the Advanced search many times to look for book reviews. A shout out goes to Jean Peterson in Tech Services for showing me how to do that my second day on the job!
I've used the Publications tab many times to search for a specific article I've seen in a print version of a magazine. For the heck of it I tracked down the issue of American Libraries that came out right before the 2006 annual conference in New Orleans. My mom wrote a French Quarter restaurant guide for that issue and I always enjoy reading it. Maybe that's cheating, but I don't care :)
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
SIRS Issue Researcher
Leading Issues - "Drilling for Oil" caught my eye. My parents live in New Orleans, went through Katrina, and are now dealing with more crap from the BP fiasco. I went down to visit them last month and we drove out to where "land" ends and the marshes begin. We saw a group of people loading boom onto a fishing boat (pictures at the bottom). But I digress...
What I liked best about all the information and options under the topic was the fact that if a PDF of an article isn't available, SIRS has still provided a color copy of any accompanying graph, charts, or tables. I was also intrigued by the fact that they give a file size for each article. My computer doesn't play nicely with Quicktime so I didn't get to listen to the Audio MP3 of the article - bummer! The Timeline feature under Research Tools was very in depth. One of the features of Issue Researcher I find the most helpful is the Pro/Con box with pre-selected articles for both sides.
Curriculum Pathfinders - I chose Language Arts and what I liked right away was the tag cloud of possible/popular research topics. The Lord of the Flies interactive game was...different....I also like the list of related subject terms linked to each article description. Most of the articles were at a fairly high Lexile level.
All in all, I liked the experience of exploring Issues Researcher better than yesterday's experience of Discoverer.
What I liked best about all the information and options under the topic was the fact that if a PDF of an article isn't available, SIRS has still provided a color copy of any accompanying graph, charts, or tables. I was also intrigued by the fact that they give a file size for each article. My computer doesn't play nicely with Quicktime so I didn't get to listen to the Audio MP3 of the article - bummer! The Timeline feature under Research Tools was very in depth. One of the features of Issue Researcher I find the most helpful is the Pro/Con box with pre-selected articles for both sides.
Curriculum Pathfinders - I chose Language Arts and what I liked right away was the tag cloud of possible/popular research topics. The Lord of the Flies interactive game was...different....I also like the list of related subject terms linked to each article description. Most of the articles were at a fairly high Lexile level.
All in all, I liked the experience of exploring Issues Researcher better than yesterday's experience of Discoverer.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
SIRS Discoverer
1. Armadillos - Personally I'd like to know if was Jane or Julie who decided on armadillos :) I've actually been about 2 feet away from an armadillo once. They're kinda cute!
But on with the lesson...First of all I have to say that some of the article titles made me laugh: "Hard Body," "Boinngg! Here Come the Armadillos," and "Real Animals or Magic?" are among my favorites. It was nice that in the search results list articles with photographs had the little camera icon and the Lexile level listed. The articles were generally good and age-appropriate; but one entitled "The Face Only a Mother Could Love" from Southern Living caught me a little off-guard with the first sentence: "Beauty may be skin-deep, but when you're talking about an armadillo, ugliness goes all the way to the bone. What other animal looks like it was fashioned from leftover parts after God finished making everything else?" Ouch!!!!! So they may not be a delicate humming bird or a powerful tiger, but let's not teach our kids to be so snarky! I'll admit that armadillos seem a bit unfortunate, but have you seen Sphynx cats? Give me an armadillo any day over those!
2.a. Country Facts - I checked out both the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Along with maps and pictures of the flags, there were general facts about the geography and population, as well as a listing of important historical events. But more than that I like the fact-finder worksheets at the top of each article. I appreciate that each of these is created by professionals using reliable sources, but the articles referenced from the two countries I looked up are, frankly, old. The newest one from either is 2006. I'm sorry but in that respect Wikipedia's gotcha beat!
2.b. Maps of the World - I started out using some of the 7 boxes of map choices listed along the top of the page...maybe I'm just a negative Nelly today, but I was not impressed with these maps for the most part. It's nice that you can print the map out in color, but it bothers me that all the maps I looked at had dates of 1998 or older. Most teachers wouldn't look favorably on print information that old, so to have it in an electronic resource is disappointing. When I started using the alphabet options & the search options, I was amazed to see how many more options for maps there were. Many of these were much more interesting and informative. However, I was still disappointed by the timeliness of some of them. One map of the US for "Immigrants Admitted by Intended State of Residence" was from 1992! This is way too old!
2.c. I decided to explore the "Fiction" area. Not bad, not too bad at all. It's nice that most of the stories are short so they aren't hard to read on a computer, if you don't want to print them. These would be useful things to have for summer reading extras.
I also found the overall layout of this database to be rather unappealing.
But on with the lesson...First of all I have to say that some of the article titles made me laugh: "Hard Body," "Boinngg! Here Come the Armadillos," and "Real Animals or Magic?" are among my favorites. It was nice that in the search results list articles with photographs had the little camera icon and the Lexile level listed. The articles were generally good and age-appropriate; but one entitled "The Face Only a Mother Could Love" from Southern Living caught me a little off-guard with the first sentence: "Beauty may be skin-deep, but when you're talking about an armadillo, ugliness goes all the way to the bone. What other animal looks like it was fashioned from leftover parts after God finished making everything else?" Ouch!!!!! So they may not be a delicate humming bird or a powerful tiger, but let's not teach our kids to be so snarky! I'll admit that armadillos seem a bit unfortunate, but have you seen Sphynx cats? Give me an armadillo any day over those!
2.a. Country Facts - I checked out both the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Along with maps and pictures of the flags, there were general facts about the geography and population, as well as a listing of important historical events. But more than that I like the fact-finder worksheets at the top of each article. I appreciate that each of these is created by professionals using reliable sources, but the articles referenced from the two countries I looked up are, frankly, old. The newest one from either is 2006. I'm sorry but in that respect Wikipedia's gotcha beat!
2.b. Maps of the World - I started out using some of the 7 boxes of map choices listed along the top of the page...maybe I'm just a negative Nelly today, but I was not impressed with these maps for the most part. It's nice that you can print the map out in color, but it bothers me that all the maps I looked at had dates of 1998 or older. Most teachers wouldn't look favorably on print information that old, so to have it in an electronic resource is disappointing. When I started using the alphabet options & the search options, I was amazed to see how many more options for maps there were. Many of these were much more interesting and informative. However, I was still disappointed by the timeliness of some of them. One map of the US for "Immigrants Admitted by Intended State of Residence" was from 1992! This is way too old!
2.c. I decided to explore the "Fiction" area. Not bad, not too bad at all. It's nice that most of the stories are short so they aren't hard to read on a computer, if you don't want to print them. These would be useful things to have for summer reading extras.
I also found the overall layout of this database to be rather unappealing.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Laissez Faire my Lesson 1C!
Can you guess which version of World Book Foreign Language Edition I chose to play with? :)
Well, other than if a French child needed to do some homework while traveling in the U.S., I'm not sure how this would really benefit the average library user. I got excited by the guinea pigs, but then backtracked to antelope. It's conceivable that children could discern what other types of antelope exist across the ocean, which this article seem to feature. However, I then did a search in the PL Research version and got tons more information than in the French version.
While listening to an article in the Spanish language version it was nice to have whatever section or feature highlighted as it was read aloud.
Well, other than if a French child needed to do some homework while traveling in the U.S., I'm not sure how this would really benefit the average library user. I got excited by the guinea pigs, but then backtracked to antelope. It's conceivable that children could discern what other types of antelope exist across the ocean, which this article seem to feature. However, I then did a search in the PL Research version and got tons more information than in the French version.
While listening to an article in the Spanish language version it was nice to have whatever section or feature highlighted as it was read aloud.
Lesson 1B
So I decided to knock it off with the wombats and porcupines, to check out coyotes. In World Book Online for Kids (PL version), the information is simple but effective for the age group. I do wish they would use real photos for this age group though. I don't really see the point of using drawings for little kids. I also listened to the coyote sound...not impressed really. Let's see what we have in Info Finder...
Ahh, much more information on coyotes in Info Finder, and once again a real photograph and Latin as well. I also just noticed the "double click on a word to define it" feature. Pretty neat. It's also interesting to me that there is no mention of the articles for the K-5 grades being aligned with the SD content standards. I wonder why that is? Hmmm....
Okay, so when I went into World Book Reference Center I totally got distracted by a picture of Mount Raupehu on the North Island of New Zealand - I'm a huge LOR fan. Then I thought I might as well look up New Zealand as my country. I like the feature on the left that just gives a bunch of pictures. I would think this would be very helpful for a student doing research on a country. The e-book feature on the right is also interesting. Also, primary sources are also very helpful to many people doing research. I think people will like the general layout and graphic nature of the articles. It's laid out very nicely.
Ahh, much more information on coyotes in Info Finder, and once again a real photograph and Latin as well. I also just noticed the "double click on a word to define it" feature. Pretty neat. It's also interesting to me that there is no mention of the articles for the K-5 grades being aligned with the SD content standards. I wonder why that is? Hmmm....
Okay, so when I went into World Book Reference Center I totally got distracted by a picture of Mount Raupehu on the North Island of New Zealand - I'm a huge LOR fan. Then I thought I might as well look up New Zealand as my country. I like the feature on the left that just gives a bunch of pictures. I would think this would be very helpful for a student doing research on a country. The e-book feature on the right is also interesting. Also, primary sources are also very helpful to many people doing research. I think people will like the general layout and graphic nature of the articles. It's laid out very nicely.
Lesson 1A
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
