Challenge 3 - SIRS Discoverer and Issues Researcher

I'm not sure if I should be posting this afternoon. My brain has been really goofy today. So if I don't make sense, at least I might be entertaining!!

I was all excited the end of last week to take this information out to one of the rural schools I do classes at and show them how to use it. The teacher had asked for some books or magazines with information on the students oration topics. I wasn't coming up with books for MADD or Red Cross, but I found some great magazine articles in SIRS Discoverer. The kids were finding the site easy to use and liked seeing how much information they could find. But my excitement ended when the kids got out their flash drives and showed me that they were basically done with finding their information and were working out their speeches. They really didn't get any new information. Bummer! I wish I could have been in at the beginning of the project so they wouldn't have used just Google for their information. Guess there's always next year.

In doing my homework before going out to the school, if found I liked the break down of information resources for the articles. There were 78 articles on armadillos, but if I only wanted magazine articles, I could click on the 41 magazine articles and read through which ones would work for my research. It did seem to me that when I left it at all 78 articles, the first 12 were the most relevant to what I was searching. When I was working with the rural students, we found that misspelling the words in our search bar was ok because it would ask us if we meant what we really wanted. I kept in mind the lexile reading levels when the kids were searching their information so it would be readable to them.

When I selected my country facts, I found it to be a great quick search area for just facts. But then I clicked on the "apple" icon to get articles for information about my country. Liked reading the magazine and newspaper articles relating to things happening in that country. I also used the same country for the map and it was ok. I can see sending students to this to look for maps.

The database feature I explored was Fiction. I liked finding all kinds of stories for kids to read. There were some that I could see as an instructor using to help with lessons. But also for kids to go to when they have a little extra time and just want something to read.

With Issues Researcher, I really like the pros vs cons set up. What a good way for students to help get ideas for debates and speeches. I looked up Distracted Driving and read both sides of the issue. Even though I already know how I feel about the issue, it was good to see the other side and get a broader knowledge of what the issue is. I think the note organizer is a great tool to help you get your ideas down where you can see where you are at and what more you need.

The curriculum pathfinder is another way to narrow down your search when you look it up by subject. This time I went into Science and chose Space Exploration. I like that it gave me three different issues to decide which one I was more interested in. The timeline feature was great. I also like the my analysis tool to help decide what topic I want and what exactly I want to find out.

I'm thinking about making this my lesson for the older students this week in the Rural schools. I think it would be interesting to see where they go with the Pro vs. Con.

Challenge 2 - Learning Express

I am not smarter than a 5th grader! And I couldn't go in and pass a Praxis test without help from this site!

Apparently I had tried out this site before because I had an account already, but had to change my password to get into this again. It was very easy to do that and now I have the new password written down so I can continue to "play" in this site. I had tried some of the elementary tests before, so this time I tried a middle school geography test. I didn't flunk the test, but I could have done better. Last week when I was working on this assignment, I tried a few questions in the Praxis test. Today I decided to try it again and give it a better chance. I found out I need to do some more studying before I could pass the test and it suggested other tests to try to get some practice. It's nice to know what I need to study. I liked being able to go back and look at the questions I got wrong so I could see if it was in the areas I was struggling with my answers. It gave me a clear look at where I'm lacking!

In the job search and workplace section I did the job interview portion. It has been some time since I've been on an interview and I'm not comfortable with how I present myself. I really liked all of the suggestions the site gave for the practice answers I gave. It is a useful tool to get your mind in the right frame to be ready for the questions you may get. While I was doing this portion, I was sharing my responses with one of my co-workers, who had a previous job of helping people get ready for job interviews and she was a great resource to help me make my answers better.

Finally, I downloaded two different e-books. One was on studying geography for 20 minutes per day to help me with the middle school tests. The other was on deciding if you want to be a teacher before you get into taking college classes. I didn't look at the copyright date of the geography book, but the teacher book was a 2009 copyright. It still has relevant information for helping you decide if a teaching career is for you.

Overall, I found this to be a very useful site.

Challenge 1 - World Book

I have used World Book Online before with my rural school classes. Lee Crary had told about the animal comparison available on the School edition of World Book Kids and I used it for a lesson in encyclopedias last year. The kids had fun with it. Before that, in classes kids had found the sound button to hear the sounds animals make and then had to search for all of the sound effects they could find. Again, they had fun. Did we get much actual learning done? Probably not!! Left to their own devices, they went into the games portion of World Book Kids and had to try out as many of them as time allowed. Playing games is always more attractive than having to do research! And my philosophy is if they are having fun, they are going to think about it again and might even learn a little bit when they aren't expecting it!

Looking at these sites from the Public library viewpoint, I think World Book is a great reference tool. When kids come in to the library to use computers for their research, they always go straight to Google. Now I can try to lead them in a different direction and help them get onto World Book Online. They don't seem to like to go to the book version of World Book and we only have so many non-fiction books on the shelves for students to check out and take home. This will be another way they can research their topic.

I didn't see any difference between the School and Public Library editions. I looked up the same animal for both editions and got the same photos and articles. I like the separation of length of information between Kids and Student or Info Finder. It's definitely geared to the age ranges of the students. Love the feature that allows them to click on a word to get the definition or having the article read to them. What I liked better about the School Edition is the content standards being available. Great for teachers but not needed for public use.

Not being a person who has studied or used a foreign language, I could appreciate World Book Discover having the function of translating the article into another language. I haven't come across any need for it yet in the public library, but am glad to know it's there if I do need it. Maybe sometimes I could use the Spanish language encyclopedia to help me when I come across some of the Spanish words in picture books that I read aloud.

Overall, this is a great reference tool. I just need to use it more myself and help other patrons and students use it more.

Here we go!!

Well, I have a blog! Now, what am I going to do with it? Just use it for this challenge or use it to connect with the rural teachers and students I see for work or just keep it going with all my other rambling thoughts? Time will tell.

I'm excited and leary about doing this library challenge. There's so much there that I haven't ever looked at and some of the information that I've used, but not in-depth. I'm sure I'll learn alot!

So with that, let the games begin!!