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.