Wrap Up

What was your biggest discovery?

My biggest discovery was that Marvel has changed tremendously. And I thoroughly enjoyed learning how to use it properly. I had tried to use this resource quite a few years ago and ran away from it because it was not kid-friendly, but the new look and feel is much more friendly to kids and adults. Some my favorite databases for school that we viewed were Britannica K-12 and K-2, the Learning Express and the NoveList K-8 Plus. The Britannica series has been very useful so far this year when I teach researching to my third and fourth graders. The younger version is very helpful for my K-2 students because it has more multimedia options for them. The Learning Express was a great option for teachers to use to prepare their students for upcoming tests. I love that they have different regional options for the tests, too. The NoveList K-8 Plus is a great resource for teachers also. This helps them find appropriate books for their students by age, Lexile reading level and genre. What a great tool for teachers and students to use. Personally, I really liked the Health Source and Medline Plus database because I have an autoimmune disease and these two resources offer many different reading options for my researching. I can not only look up my disease and find out the latest news, I can also look up any medicines I am going to try or what homeopathic options are available. I love that resource. I also liked the Newspapers and Maine Newstand database because I don’t always have time to read the newspaper and then I will hear about an article someone has read and I want to read it. This resource gives me that option. I was able to look back about 4 or 5 years and view an article about Bee Venom therapy that I have never read. I found out some real interesting things about it that I did not know.

How will you promote or use the resources with your patrons, colleagues or students?

I have already used the Britannica resources with students at both my elementary schools that I work at since we started this class. I also have shown a few of my colleagues some of the resources available to them for free. I think a good way for me to promote this site is to either have a class on it during a workshop day or spend time showing it off at a staff meeting. The word does need to be spread about this because it is so much easier to use and it is such a valuable, free resource for educators and students. Too many people are unaware of Marvel. I think it is so valuable that more families need to know about this also. This is where promotion becomes more difficult because the connection between home and school is not a real strong one for many schools and many families in my area still do not have internet access. I will definitely have a link to this site from my portaportal site (bookmarking site) so home access can be easier. I will also keep using it as a resource for my students to use during research time and keep telling them that this resource is free and accessible from home for free. Not too many things in this life are free, so we need to take full advantage of things that are free, especially when they are so valuable to many.

Ebsco Database and Ebsco eBooks

EBSCO Databases

You get to these Ebsco databases a couple of ways.  The easiest way is to go to the MARVEL homepage by clicking on the alphabetical list link above.  Pick one of the databases mentioned above from the alphabetical list or pick Ebsco Host from the list and then choose the database from that list.
I chose the primary search in EBSCO because I work mainly with elementary students and wanted to see how it worked.
 One of the first things to figure out is what journals and books are actually indexed in the database.  To do that, click on “Publications” in the blue menu bar at the top of the page.  Scroll down the list or search for a popular magazine title.  Is it covered in the database you’re in?
There were a lot of publications associated with the primary search. I checked to make sure that some typical kid publications were available. I found Boy’s Life, Girl’s Life, Sesame Street, and Highlights just to name a few. There were pages and pages of publications, though.
Now, click “Basic Search” and type a search in the search box. Search for answers to the question about zinc in foods posed at the beginning of the post if you can’t think of something else. Review the results, selecting an article to see what kind of information you can find. Discuss your results.
I searched for Zinc in Food and found only one article that had anything to do with zinc. I tried many different versions of putting these word together, but always came up with the same results. The article that was really about my search topic, Powerful Food to Pack Your Plate, from Girl’s Life magazine. In this article I learned that red meat has lots of zinc. Zinc is essential for immunity and growth in children. The other search results had to do with countries like Portugal and Macedonia. One thing I really liked was that the primary search offers the ability to have the article read to you instead of reading it yourself.

EBSCO eBooks

Do a search for a topic that interests you. Note the default search is “full text.” You may want to change the search to keyword. Review your findings and observations.
I found out right away that the eBooks do not load in Firefox. You have to use Safari  (or another browser) when you are on a Mac to view the eBook online. I searched for Rheumatoid Arthritis because it is an interest of mine. I like to keep updated on info about this disease because I have it. I searched for an eBook on RA and found one from the Mayo Clinic. It was very informative and I learned a lot while looking through it. I found out, through a web link from this eBook, that the FDA just approved (new news release today) a new class of oral medication for RA for people who do not respond well to methatrexate, a common medication used in treatment for RA.  Also I found out that there are many herbal plants that can help with RA inflammation, like cinnamon, ginger and celery seed. I learned more about Bee Venom treatment, which is my medication for my RA, and why it is working well for me. Overall I really enjoyed the experience and now have a new way to research and find books to support my research.
Constitution Day is looming and several students need more material. Search NetLibrary and recommend some appropriate titles.
Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights During the Civil War Era, The American Republic : Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny, Representing Popular Sovereignty : The Constitution in American Political Culture, and The Constitution of the United States of America would all seem to be appropriate eBooks for this topic.
A class is doing projects on Western history. They have exhausted the library’s print collection. In NetLibrary, click “Advanced Search.” In the Publisher box, type “Nebraska” or “Oklahoma.” Report your findings.
I found that all of the 11 results, when limiting it to Nebraska, were straight from the University of Nebraska. The results focused on the Cherokee Indians that inhabited Nebraska, diaries of people during the Oregon expansion, a book about Joseph de Maistre’s social and political thought, human ideals defenses, crime and society, and a book about Georgian desertion during the civil war. When I narrowed it down by the history category I only had 4 results. The first 2 were about the Georgian army desertion and Abraham Lincoln. The next 2 were about the diaries from the Oregon mission and the westward expansion. 
I found the same when I limited the publisher to Oklahoma, even though I had 105 results. I received information about 16 different eBooks published by the University of Oklahoma Press when I limited the category to just history and the U.S.. The topics ranged anywhere from Oklahoma prehistory to native Americans in the area to battles of the west to Californian history. It was much easier to wade through the results when it was limited to history and the U.S in both instances.

Week 9-Learning Express

Set-up an account in LearningExpress and browse through the available exams.
This was very easy to do. I liked how easy this was to set-up. I wondered if you could set this up for a whole class without using e-mail addresses, but I could not find any way to do that. I know the teachers would find this very valuable if all could login to one site and the results could be there for them to view.
Choose one and answer a few questions. Then click “Score my test” in the top toolbar. Ignore the warnings and continue to have your test scored, so that you can see how the diagnostic page looks. Then click “View Answers” at the bottom of the page. What did you think about this test experience?
I chose both the math and reading tests for 4th grade. First I chose 4th Grade Math Practice: Geometry. I answered the first 5 questions and had my test scored. I really liked the fact that you can see what you did wrong on each question that was wrong in the View My Answers section. I think both kids and adults preparing for a test would also find this very valuable. I am thinking about having my son try these tests to prepare for his NWEA testing. This is a good way to show the kids how to test on a computer in addition to building their test taking skills and knowledge. The second choice was the California 4th Grade Reading Test. This was very good also. I managed to finish this test just because I wanted to see what would happen at the end of a test. It simply says you are finished and it gives you a score. Then you can also view your answers to see which ones were wrong and why they were considered wrong answers.
Job searching and resume writing are among the self-paced courses in LearningExpress.  Click on the “Job Search and Workplace Skills” learning center and add one of the courses to your center.  Take a few minutes to explore the course and note your observations.
I spent a lot of time on this part because I was really curious how this worked. I chose the Creating a Great Resume. It had two segments. Segment 1 fully explained each section of the resume and why it is important to employers. It explained the three types of resumes you can make and then it helped you choose the best one for you. Segment 2 helped you create a resume. This is such a great tool for high school and college students who don’t have a lot of money and are not really sure how to sell their skills to an employer. This walks you through resume creating and then gives you a copy of your resume in text format so you can insert it into a word-processing document that you like to use. It takes all the hard work out of the resume writing.
Type a search term in the search box in the upper left of the home page for a skills improvement or career topic in which you are interested. Notice that results are sorted by tests, courses and eBooks (if all of those are available for your chosen topic). Please select an eBook and look through its pages.
I looked up teaching and found a great ebook that helps parents learn about homeschooling. It had three parts; an overview explaining homeschooling, a language arts section that helps parents know what to expect from their middle school children as they teach them about language arts. It gives reading work for the students to work on and even gives an answer key in the appendix. The third section was mathematics. This section just like language arts talked about mathematic expectations of a middle school child and gave problems and answers for the parent to use with their child. Then there is a huge section of appendixes. The first two deal with language arts, an answer key and a glossary. The next two deal with math, an answer key and glossary are also found here. The next two are resources for both parents and students. The student resources are books to read in all subjects, periodicals that are interesting for kids, movies, computer software, audio resources, and internet websites. The parent resources include books and magazines that support homeschooling, websites for support and reading lists that are middle school appropriate. The last section is Homeschooling Parent Associations. It gives addresses and website for organizations that parents can contact for help. All in all this resource is very valuable for any parent wishing to begin homeschooling their middle school child.

Week 8-Ancestry Library

Ancestry Library

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be dead to be listed in Ancestry Library and can frequently find useful information in the U.S. Phone and Address Directories, 1993-2002. You may even find your marriage license. Search for your own name in Ancestry Library and report the results.

After spending time figuring out how to get access to this, I finally broke down and requested a free trial. I had no problem finding my name when I searched using my maiden name. I was able to see my maiden name results and my marriage license with my married name. When I searched using just my married name I did not find myself at all. I was able to search for my husband’s name and found him no problem. I was only able to find public records for my husband, but I was able to see our Nevada marriage license and public records for myself. We are unlisted in the phone book. I wonder how much that has to do with it.

In Ancestry Library, search for a grandparent or great-grandparent and see if you can locate them in the census.  Report your findings.

I searched for my great-grandmother, Bertha Trebilcock, and was able to find all of her records from the 1930 and 1940 census list. It showed info about my great-grandfather (with a clickable link to his info) and info about her son (also with a clickable link to his info). It was really neat to see that information because it is such a “snapshot” in time. It even knew that her birth date was somewhere around 1896, though it did not have her actual certificate information. I did not know this but her son’s birth name was actually Clifford, not Edward (as we all knew him).

In Ancestry Library, perform a search under the “Photos and Maps” tab for “Maine” as the keyword.  Report your findings. This was hard to find and I actually called ancestry.com to find out how to find it. Once I found the right place to be, I found that there was a lot of information to look through. Under the Collections tab there were Maine census and voter lists, Maine birth, death and marriage info, Maine military lists, a Maine immigration and travel section, Maine newspaper and publications, Maine reference, dictionary and atlas info, Maine maps, atlases and gazetteers, Maine stories, memories and history, Maine schools, directories and church histories, Maine tax, criminal, land and wills. Under the History tab, there were clickable links to the history of Maine, featured Maine data collections, and famous Maine people who had signed their census form. There is also a Help and Advice section that gives you information about Maine towns and counties, family history research, research in New England town, and a link to the Maine Geological Society. The final tab to click on in this section was Resources. This section offered other ways to search for information.

Lets Get Healthy

Health Source: Consumer Edition:

There were a lot of choices of journals, magazines, scholarly journals, etc on the Health Source: Consumer Edition section of Marvel. I searched for Rheumatoid Arthritis and got a lot of results. I read 2 different types of articles from the most recent offerings (2012 and 2010). One was from a magazine, Natural Health, and was an article about a woman’s success with beating back the effects of rheumatoid arthritis. It was an inspirational story about how she fought through the pain and managed to push her RA into remission. She did this by working out five days a week with both cardio and weights. She also changed the ways she ate by substituting fruits for greasy potato chips. After reading this short, inspiring article I thought maybe the more scientific articles may be harder to read. I picked an article from AHFS Consumer Medical Information about a medicine I have taken before. After reading this article, which was consumer friendly, I am glad that I stopped taking it! The article was very easy to understand and I will be passing it on to another colleague that I know takes this medicine. Great resource!

Medline Plus:

1. I could not find Medline Plus on Marvel so I Google searched it and found it on the NIH website. Medline was the only reference on Marvel.

2. When I finally found the page I found that the main page has a lot of info at your fingertips. There were some great articles referenced on the News column on the right side. There were articles about the possibility that people may not need to fast before a cholesterol test, there are gene differences with people who have lung cancer and smoked and those that did not smoke. There was also an article about how spinal steroid shots may not help people who have sciatica. If you were interested you could dig deeper into the news and click on the link that gives you more health news. They also have a section called Top Searches that offers a Wordle application to point out the most searched topics. The bigger the word the more times it has been searched. Asthma, Diabetes, Vitamin D and Hypertension were the most searched so far today.

3. After clicking on Drugs and Supplements, I looked up Levothyroxin. Levothyroxin is the medicine I have to take for my thyroid deficiency. There was a lot of information about this medication. It offered information on when to take this medication, what it is prescribed for, any interactions with other medications, what to do if you forget your medication, and any special diet information you may need to know. I searched for an herbal supplement after and found the same information choices as the prescribed medication.

4. When I searched for rheumatoid arthritis there were a lot more research offerings on Medline Plus than in Health Source: Consumer Edition. They give you a general overview of the disease and then they offer a starting point for your research. Scrolling down the page the topic is divided into many categories for deeper researching. The information seems to come more from organizations and colleges than from periodicals on Medline Plus. The information is more medically written than the Health Source edition and seems to be harder to understand than Health Source. However all results are full text because it links you directly to the website were the information came from.

5. When you click on videos you get a choice of Anatomy videos, Surgery videos and Interactive Tutorials. I looked at a video on rheumatoid arthritis through the interactive tutorials link. It was very good. It would be a great tool for doctors to use with their patients to help explain their disease or medical procedure they have or are going to have. It reads the slides to the user and shows great pictures to along with the descriptive text. When you choose a video to watch you have your choice of Interactive Tutorial (you can control), Self Playing Tutorial (runs by itself) or Text Summary (pdf version of the information).

Business Resources

 Business Source Complete

1. Do a search for available information on FM radio. Pay attention to the types of sources found.

After doing this search on FM radio I found that there were a couple of academic journals and lots of periodical choices.

2. Look for the visual search option and try it. Does it make searching easier or harder? When I did the visual search it loaded in the Column Display Style, which I found very hard to navigate. I changed it to the Block Display Style and found it much more visually pleasing. I actually liked the Visual search much more than the list search I started with. It was easier to see because it put the title and date in block style for you. I thought it did not give an abstract, but when you clicked on the title, the abstract loads on the right. That is very helpful when you are researching because you can preview what its about first then you can decide if it is generally what you are looking for.

EconLit

1. Complete a search to find resources for small business owners.

I did this and I used the visual search, which was much easier to see the results graphically. This topic is very Greek to me so the results did not make a whole lot of sense, but I could see where business-minded people would use this search to find pertinent information for their own businesses.

2. Complete a search for items that pertain to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and small businesses. This only gave me 1 result and I am not certain how helpful it is for that particular topic.

3. Complete a search for items that pertain to tax policy and small businesses. There were a few results to look through on this topic. Again I found the visual search the best way to search. I grouped the results by publication, which allowed me to see where the information was coming from.

Regional Business News

1. Pick a nationally known company. Search under the company’s name and look at the results. I looked up Walmart. I got almost 9,000 results from news and periodical sources.

2. Narrow the regional search to something more appropriate for this area of the country. I added New England in the search box, had it search all terms and got results from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, Maryland, etc. It searched for New and England and returned results that were from the New York Times.

3. Choose a Maine company to see what information is available about either the company or its industry. I searched BIW and returned 68 results. The results were from news, government documents, and periodicals. There were many articles updating the reader on things that were happening at BIW, and the governmental connections and opportunities with their business.

Value Line

1. Look at the current issue of Value Line. Explore the various links for the “Investment Survey,” which is the primary tool available to public library users. Start with “Description,” which gives a good description of the site. This provides a great description of what Value Line can do for the consumer. It also gives a general overview of the stock reports they provide.

2. Look at the various reports offered: Ratings and Reports, Selection and Opinion, Summary and Index, etc. Familiarize yourself with the information contained in each report and how they differ.

The Ratings and Reports section gives information about 133 different companies. It offers the company’s name, the ticker for the company, the industry it belongs to, and the timeliness for each company. You can view these reports in either PDF or HTML version. The Selection and Opinion report is a PDF of the updates that have occurred during the week in the stock world. It gives you low risk options and advice on what stocks are worth purchasing and the overall ups and downs in the stock market. The Summary and Index report is a 40 page PDF that is an overall index to current stocks and their ratings, the timeliness ranks of each company, timely stocks, conservative stocks, stocks that are ranked 2, highest yielding stocks, biggest free flow cash generators, the widest discount from book value, etc for individual companies. The Standard Ratings and Report Cover Page is a 2 page index of where to find info on specific companies and it gives the National Income Series information for consumers. The Standard Ratings and Report Supplementary section supplements more detailed information about specific larger companies. 

3. Pick a well-known stock such as Starbucks, General Motors, Apple, etc., and do a company search using either the general search box at the top of the page or “company look up.” Familiarize yourself with the type of information provided by linking to the various tabs at the top of the report. Also look to see if there is a “full research report” available for the company.

I chose Apple, which I found out in the stock world is called AAPL, and it had a full research report which was a one page PDF of detailed Apple stock and company information. The tabs were also very detailed. The Quotes tab revealed the current placement of Apple stock in the stock market. It gives prices and information stock buyers are in need of. The News tab gives the most recent business news about the company from many different business sources. The Option tab gives the most recent price for stocks to bid on or ask and when these prices will expire. The Graph tab, which was foreign to me, seemed to show the stock progress throughout the day. The Time/Sales tab shows 1 minute of bids and asking prices and the market it happened in.

WallStreet Journal

1. Using the advance search feature, look for articles on small business and health care. There were almost 20,000 results.

2. Look at how the results are returned and the suggested limiters offered by the site. What might a small business person be interested in? A small business person looking for health care information might limit their search by looking up small business and health care expenditures so they will understand the costs for providing this type of care. They also might limit it by looking up small business and health care policy so they can find out about health care policies that small business might adopt. Anther limit could be small business and health insurance so they can get an idea of what kinds of insurance small business offer their employees. A fourth limiter could be small business and health care to get a general overview of having insurance in a small business.

3. Familiarize yourself with the options available to follow up on your search, such as creating alerts. Yeah, creating an alert worked for me! It was easy to use and sends the information directly to my e-mail as it becomes available. I was able to name the alert whatever I wanted and could schedule it daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Another option was RSS feed, which created a web address that I could visit to see new articles about my topic. Other options are to save my research on the ProQuest website, e-mail the research list to myself or someone else, print it, get the citing information or export/save it in another form (PDF, HTML, RTF, etc) to view it later.

NoveList Plus and NoveList K-8 Plus

1. How can the view component make your job connecting readers with books easier? The series I chose to search for was the Susan Wiggs’ series. I love her style of writing. She has the ability to captivate me for hours while I am reading. I would use the view component on NoveList Plus or NoveList Plus K-8 to interest adults and kids in other books in a series that they might enjoy. I would choose the detailed view because it shows the student what the book looks like, gives all the important information on how to get it and gives a general overview of what the book is all about. That way they can preview the book that they are interested in reading before they begin reading it. It reminded me a lot of the book orders that my son comes home with because they also give a brief description along with the important book information so they can find it later or before they order it. It is important to be able to preview the book they are choosing to read so they do not spend (waste) a lot of time trying to figure out whether or not they will like the book when they start reading.

2. How can using this tool make your job easier and promote better customer service in your library? I am not a librarian, but I could imagine that having a tool like this will definitely increase my customer service approval and make my job easier if I were a librarian. My patrons would be able to look up their favorite author and find books by other authors with the same writing style. It introduces them to new authors, expands their reading lists and allows the librarian to assist others with other issues while these patrons find books of their liking. The librarian is freed up from having to suggest new reads and the patron is still getting spectacular customer service because they are finding new reads on their own.

3.  How can using NoveList Plus help you to increase awareness of the collection you have worked so hard to build, for both new and older items? Using NoveList Plus can help increase your awareness of the collection you have built because it keeps a record of all the books in a series from beginning to end. As the years go by, the librarian would only have to search up the series to see when new books are added to these collections. It would also show the librarian which series he/she might add if one particular series is real popular with the patrons. This will help them increase their collections and still keep their patrons pleased.

4. I guess I took the question in Question 3 too literal. Other participants answered in ways that they could help their patrons find particular books that their patrons would enjoy reading, where I answered ways that the librarian might use the NoveList Plus to keep their collections complete and up-to-date. I did manage to find one other participant that understood the question like I did. I am feeling better now.

Hobbies and Crafts Reference Center Week 4

1.  I chose two of my favorite hobbies that I never have any time to do. The first was scrapbooking. There are a lot of articles on scrapbooking through a three different periodical choices. My closest library, Lewiston Pubic Library, does not have any of these three choices listed. The second hobby I chose was photography. I love to take pictures, but never time to learn more about my camera and its abilities. There are two periodicals listed on Marvel, Popular Photography and Shutterbug. Popular Photography was one of the periodicals listed for my nearby library so it did have some of the same periodicals, but the hobbies and craft resource center offered more. 

2. I looked at projects for scrapbooking and they were awesome. Two in particular that I would love to try are Chalk Ink Technique Triple Play and Incredible Archival Inks. I love the way they use chalk to create some great background pages in the first project. The second project has ways to create pre-made stamp sayings for your scrapbooking page. I love the way they make the letters so bold and loud. The photography search did not offer any projects, which I thought was too bad. A lot of teachers would be able to use photography projects that they could do with their students or better their photography skills on their own.

3. On the help section I looked up Wildcard and Truncation. This information was very helpful because they will search for information without having to know the exact word you are searching. The wildcard choice allows you to put a ? where you don’t know the letter or correct spelling for a word. If you put the word co?t It will return results for words like coat, cost, colt, etc that have the same letters with the question mark replaced by a different letter. The truncation allows you to put a * on the end of a word so you will get all results for the base of the word. For example, you can write construct* and you will get results for constructed, construction, constructing, etc with the same base word you searched for. I also watched the tutorial on using the Hobbies and Crafts section and that’s where I realized that I could have searched for photography as my hobby, also. The tutorial was very good and showed how to use Boolean and advanced searches.

Maine Newsstand Proquest Discovery Exercise

           The tutorial was very helpful to learn how to navigate through the newsstand search. It was simple and easy to follow and understand. After watching the tutorial, I jumped right into the basic search. I searched for the full text articles about apitherapy (bee venom therapy) first and received 4 results. The newest article was from 2009, but it was still very informative. I noticed that the ones from the same year basically had the same information just through a different writer. My second search, bee venom and arthritis, produced almost the exact same results with the exception of one different article about a beekeeper from New Portland, who used bee venom to treat his aches and pains. I liked the ability to sort the articles from the most to least recent. It made it easier for me to find the latest news about apitherapy.

Saving the search was easy once I made an account. I was able to save my search so I can go back to it later. I was able to preview my articles and print right from the preview page. It was very easy to use. I tried to create an alert, but I was not able to do that. It kept telling me that there was a server error and to contact the tech support if it kept happening, which I did do.

To date I have used the K-12 Britannica Online School Edition and K-2 Britannica Learning Zone. My fourth graders are researching mammals to be able to write a report and we used the Britannica Online School Edition for the Elementary level. The kids had no problem using the site and really enjoyed that it read to them. My teachers, however, were amazed that such a resource was available to us for free. My second graders used the learning zone for their continent research. They were able to watch and learn new facts about each continent and write down those facts. It was easy to use, however, we seemed to have problems using Internet Explorer while watching those videos. My Firefox browser worked great. Next week, they will revisit this topic using the K-12 online school edition. They will be able to easily search the continents within the subcategory of the continent section. Also they will be able to use the speaker and have the entire page of information read to them.

Exploring the Britannica Editions

Exploring the Britannica Editions:

Elementary, Middle, High School, Public and Academic

By: Carol Reed

2A

1. Using Britannica Elementary, search for information on a mammal of your choice. Find a picture and information about its habitat.

 I searched the wapiti, which is a relative to the elk. I learned that the wapiti used to live all over North America, but now resides mainly in northwestern U.S. and southwestern Canada. It chooses to live in “open woodlands and mountain meadows.

2. Using Britannica Middle School, search for information on the same mammal you searched in Britannica Elementary and compare the amount of information.

The Middle School version does not focus on quick facts to learn about the wapiti. It focused completely on which countries they come from and what the wapiti is called in each country. This section said that in the United States it is referred to as an American elk. It also reports that the name, wapiti, came from the Shawnee, meaning “white deer”. While the elementary version had a lot more facts about the animal, the middle school version seemed to be more in depth about the animal’s beginnings. It was formatted in paragraph form instead of blocked sections created for easy reading.

3. Using Britannica High School, search for a country. Notice the types of information available on the right side bar of the results screen. What types of information will be most valuable to your patrons?

The multimedia options are great for students with disabilities and the learning materials are a great option for the teacher who is teaching about the country. The actual encyclopedia piece was 125 pages, but you can jump ahead to different sections within the article and it also offers links to expand your research and even a primary source link. This is a great tool for my elementary teachers because they can get some great teaching resources here for free.

4. Using either the Middle or High School level, click on Help (top right).  In the index which is on the left side, click on “Working with Articles” and then on “Workspace”.  How useful will this feature be for your students and teachers?

This feature is great for both teachers and students. I think both would find this feature very valuable. Students can save their resources as they are searching as they find them and they can evaluate and delete ones they will not use at a later time. Narrowing down resources will help students be able to find valuable information instead of being overwhelmed with info. Teachers can offer resources to their whole class without worrying about the links getting deleted. The teacher can create a workspace for the whole class to start from that has links ready to view and have them look at info that the teacher has already narrowed down for them. Teachers could also have their students research the topic and save to individual student workspaces and then the teacher could review these resources with their students. As a technology teacher I will use this for research integration with my classes that are researching a certain topic. It makes everyone’s lives easier.

2B

1. Using Britannica Public Library Edition, search for information about a current event, such as the Arab Spring.  Notice the 3 sections of the result screen.  Click on any of the articles and read a little about the topic you chose.  Notice the Google Translator at the bottom of the article.  Would this be helpful for any of your patrons?

I think this would be very helpful in our schools for the ESL students and for the language teachers. The language teachers would be able to print out the articles in both languages to help show comparisons between the two languages being studied. The ESL students may have an easier time doing their reports if they could have them translated into their native language while they are learning English.

2. Using Britannica Public Library Edition, click on any one of the Research Tools on the left side of the homepage.  To get back to the homepage, just click on the Britannic Public Library Edition logo at the very top of the page.

The research tools are great here also. I love the multimedia and videos. I would use those to integrate with my lower grades at the ES to go along with what they are learning in the classroom.

3. Now, just explore the other features available on the main page such as the Biography of the Day or This Day in History.  What types of information will be most valuable to your patrons?

Depending on the topic they are teaching, the biography of the day or what happened on this date might work in nicely with what they are teaching. Teachers could even use it as a morning activity as they get their students ready for learning or morning meeting. Students interested in what happened on their own birthdays would find this tool very useful.

2C

1. Using Britannica Academic Edition, search for information about a current event.  Notice that the result screen is divided into 3 sections.  The middle section contains the list of articles that met your search criteria.  When you scroll over any of the titles, a short overview of the articles appears on the right side of the screen.  Click on any of the articles and read a little about the topic you chose.  Notice the citation style choices at the bottom of the screen.

I chose the US Presidential Election of 2012. It had a featured article fully explaining the race and how the Republican choice was elected. One really nice feature of this page is that you can make the font size of the article bigger if needed. I love the citation style choice at the bottom and wished I had this when I went to high school and college. I always had a difficult time remembering which citation style was written in which form. It is nice not to have to wonder when it spells it out for you.

2. Using Britannica Academic Edition, click on any one of the Research Tools on the left side of the homepage.  To get back to the homepage, just click on the Britannic Academic Edition logo at the very top of the page.

I like the research tools, but I think the Public Edition had more tools that might be useful for educators. I really like the ability to compare countries under the World Data Analyst and find that to be a useful tool for high school teachers.

3. Now, explore creating a workspace by clicking on the logo and returning to the homepage.  Tell us briefly how you might use the workspace at your institution.

I created a workspace I could use with my younger grades. My first grade class is going to be learning about spiders and I found a video to add to the workspace. What I would like to do is add more content to it and have them login to the workspace with my username. I like that they are able to view the content I put on there, but they can’t change it at all. I could also use it with my 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th graders because I could have them create their own workspace and have them research their topics and store their search results there. Then the classroom teacher and I could work individually with the students to help them narrow down the info based on their own individual abilities.  I could also see this as a huge benefit to middle and high school students who are working on a report. This would allow them to store their research info they found until they were ready to complete the report. As a high school or college student I wished I had this ability to store my resources without having to constantly change website pages. I think this is my favorite tool I have found so far, but I am sure there will be more. Although I also really liked the Britannica K-2 Learning Zone for quick center work or for free lab time.

Marvel’s Kids! Section As a Resource and Tool

By: Carol Reed

         I remembered using Marvel in the past, but I am amazed at how much it has changed on the elementary side. When I used this with my students in the past, I found it wasn't so easy for the younger grades to use. They have such a harder time reading than the older students do and it was so difficult to help everyone at once. It became chaotic. I ended up not using it anymore. So when I heard about this course I thought it might be a chance to revisit this resource and learn to effectively use this with my students. For this lesson, I chose the Kids! section from the Select a Subject side on the left. I found it easy to pick out because the Kids! section has kid-friendly font that easily attracts your eyes. Once I clicked, the menu on the right changed and I decided that I would review each of the choices that the kids I teach would be able to chose from. What I really liked about having all the choices was there were different levels of searching depending on the capabilities and age of the student K-5. I love the changes within the website and found it to be much more friendly for younger and lower level students.

         I was immediately drawn to the K-2 Britannica Learning Zone because researching with younger students can be a challenge. This is an excellent resource for teachers because the teacher could use this as a computer center in their room. The K-2 student exploring this section could choose from exploring different parts of the world, playing different games from each school subject, reading books online, or drawing different pictures on the computer. There are many choices and subjects to choose from. It is an excellent resource and I will be using this as an integration with all my K-2 classes at both schools that I teach at. The older version, K-12 Britannica Online, offers students access to videos, the K-2 Learning Center, geography help, learning games and activities, news updates, curriculum standards by state, expanded searches, and it allows you to save your favorite resources so you save them until you are done searching. I would use this with my students in grades 2-5. What a great resource for kids!

         While I was on this site I checked out the other sections, but most were not as kid-friendly as the first two I discussed. Kids Search was easy to use because it was visually stimulating for younger kids, but I am not sure they would be able to navigate it without constant teacher help. The NoveList K-8 Plus was a great resource for kids who were looking for a book. My favorite part was that they can use it to find a book that interests them when they don’t know what to read. It gives you the ability to search by tone, genre, writing style, or subject. I also found the star-rating and book review to be very helpful for kids when they need help choosing the right book. The Primary Search, though I realize you are searching a database for primary documents, was too hard for kids to use and understand on their own.It would have to be adult driven. It is, however, a great resource for teachers to find primary documents to extend the curriculum. Seachasaurus offered the ability to choose books and articles by lexile level. It offers both citations and full text options. The Student Resource Center allows for searching by periodical, primary sources, or even by photo, map or flag. I would mainly use this with older or upper level students. Windows on Maine is an awesome resource for anyone looking for information on Maine. It allows you to search, browse, or stream downloaded educational videos about Maine. At both my schools, the fourth grade teachers are truly going to love this resource not only for teaching, but also for projects and discovery. After reviewing these resources I have to admit I am ashamed of having such a great tool for my students and not being aware of it. This will make both of our lives so much easier.