Lesson 7 -- EBooks on EbscoHost (formerly NetLibrary)

Lesson 7 -- EBooks on EbscoHost (formerly NetLibrary)

Basic Discovery Exercise:

Part 1- Basic Search:

The topic I did my search on was “Multimedia Systems in Education” and I came up with 57 search results. I then change the search filter from relevance to newest. The newest results were publication from 2005. In the area of technology and digital education this is on the edge of being out dated materials. I took a look at The Encyclopedia of Multimedia Technology and Networking. The chapter on “Content Repurposing for Small Devices” turns out to be one of the shortest chapters in the book. It gave only the barest discussions of small hand held devices. There wasn’t any reference to tablets. The technology type books are going to be a little bit dated and viewer is just going to have to be rather selective.

Constitution Day:

When I looked up “Constitution Day” I came up with 38 results. The books I would recommend for further investigation would be The Bill of Rights by By: Kramarae, Cheris; Spender, Dale: The Illustrated Dictionary of Constitutional Concepts by Robert L. Maddex: and maybe the The Reader’s Companion to American History just to get background knowledge about the development of the American constitution.

Western History:

Once I put the search term of Nebraska in I came up with 88 results. Going through the selection I saw that all of them were published by the University of Nebraska. The selection covered a range of topics. Many of them were related to Native American studies. I suspect that many of these selections were written by University professors.

Part 2- Common Core Connections

CC.11.RI.7 Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.

In my investigation I found that there was a few books for younger students. Many of the books for young students were in Spanish which would be nice for ESL students. Majority of the e-books are aimed at high-school and above. The assignment I could envision assigning high school students would to pick a topic like the civil war and find at least two books and compare and contrast a key Civil War figure depicted in the book.

Students would quickly begin to understand that researchers interpret history in different ways. That the body of evidence is key to how judging the authors views. An extension of this assignment would be to take these same books and compare them to a high school textbook on the same subject. 

Lesson 6: Gale Virtual Reference Library

Basic Discovery

Getting to Know the Titles:

The volume I selected was World War II Reference Library. Once I selected it the next page was a standard table of contents. Off to the right was a drop down menu that gave the viewer additional selection. In the World War II reference library one of those selections was primary sources. I clicked on primary sources but I couldn’t seem to get it to work. I suspect only certain parts of the volume have primary sources.  One of the areas I looked at was the background to the war. This was comprehensive and well written. I really liked the related subject links on the left hand side. These links quickly took the reader to related readings. The navigation was well done. I could see older students using this reference library for many different types of research projects.

Search Term Box:

I researched Global Warming. There were 180 articles found. The results were not the normal results you would find using a typical search engine. The results were right on topic. They were from multiple different sources and gave the reader a range of articles to investigate the topic. My results included selection like Global Warming from Pollution A to Z, Global Warming from the Dictionary of American History, and Global Climate Change form UXL Encyclopedia of Water Science. This gives the researcher multiple perspectives for investigating one topic. I chose the global warming article in the Dictionary of American History. This article laid out the history of the Global Warming debate from its earliest beginning in 1824 when French scientist Jean-Baptiste Fourier first describes the earth atmosphere as a green house.

The listen feature is the same as SIRS Discoverer listen feature. It is an electronic voice that reads the entire text. The nice feature is it highlights the sentence that is being read. A blue box moves along with each word being read. The reader can easily follow along. This feature works much better than the one found in World Books for Kids.

Searching Other Blogs:

I guess many people are like me and are a little bit behind. I found the Faith Library blog and the author results were similar to what I found. I agree with the author on the difficulty with Gale Virtual Reference Library is narrowing down a search.

Common Core Connections

I did my search on “Critical Thinking”. I ended up with 47 results. Many of these results were not informative. Many of them documents that describe different countries educational systems which listed critical thinking as an area they focus on. The one article I did select that gave some relative information I found in Science Learning in the Encyclopedia of Education. This article relates to the common core anchor standards for reading:

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

1. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.
2. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
3. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

The article discusses how young learners construct theories to help make sense of the world. This theory construction is pervasive in all areas. Currently I have students doing research on a topic of their choice to put in a small PowerPoint presentation. My second and third grade students have difficulty with the note taking aspect of the project. This is one of their first tries at taking notes to use in a piece of their own writing.  Many struggle with organizing their information. They have been exposed to titles and subheadings but in their own research they have to develop their own approach for making use of the features of non-fiction. For many this gives them a new appreciation for these features and improves their reading abilities with non-fiction text. As the Gale Article points out they are engage in developing a theory about the use of text features and they engage with them they alter and expand their theory. 

Lesson 5: Proquest

Lesson 5: Proquest

 Part 1 Basic Search:

I did a basic search of Black Hole. I didn’t click on full text or peer review check box. I ended up with over a hundred thousand hits. I looked at the first couple pages of results. The articles were technical in nature. These articles were all from professional journals, and papers publish as a result of conferences and government committees. In my search of Black Holes which is a hard topic I did not find any articles that were not at a high school or higher level.

Search results can be narrow by two different ways. The first is a related search box that provides the users with addition search options for the topic they are looking for. The other way the search can be narrow is with the narrow search panel on the right side. The user can select full text, peer review, source type, or other specific criteria.

I have used Proquest in many of my graduate level courses. Proquest is really geared towards higher level learning. I think for elementary and even most middle schools the search results are at a level that is much more in-depth than they would need for any research projects they would conduct.   

Challenge Cohort is Discovering:

I looked at Elizabeth Wells blog. Her Proquest search led her to the Horn Book Guide. This week in a class I’m taking I was tasked with reviewing the Horn Book Website which has many of the reviews of the guide. Horn book provides a lot of tools for school librarians.

Publications Tab:

In Proquest under the publication search I looked for the New York Times Book review. I searched for children picture books. I’m in the process ordering books for my library. One of the results I found was the New York Times top 10 illustrated books for 2013. These books will fit right in with my book order. The result format is the same as I describe above. The searches can be narrow in a number of ways. The one I have used before and did this time was to narrow the search down by publication date. When I did that with my search I narrow down the results to the past two years.

Part 2: Common Core Connections

SD School Library Content Standards: Grades 9-12

1.12.2 Manage projects/activities by developing a personal plan.(Apply, Analyze)

1.12.3 Generate a scaffold of questions to investigate; modify as needed to broaden or narrow investigation. (Understand)

1.12.4 Locate resources appropriate for purpose using library tools. (Apply)

Proquest would fit in with any type of research project. The data base is has in-depth articles in almost every area. The first step in any research is putting together a plan. Students need to pick a topic, decided how they are going to research the topic and then pick the tools to do that research. In high school level project Proquest would be nice research tool to use. It is similar to tools they will use when the go onto college. The Proquest search options allow the students ways to broaden or narrow their searches. The key word links give them other ways at viewing their topic and widening the scope of their work. The right had panel provides them with a means for narrowing their searches. Once the research is complete the Proquest articles provide them with the means to site the research they used. Proquest would be an excellent research tool for any higher level research project. 

Lesson 4: Sirs Issues Researcher and Discoverer

Basic:

SIRS Discoverer

11)    Favorite Animal

I looked up lion. The page that appeared has as an easy navigation menu. The top of the menu are tabs that have a tab for:

• ·         all articles found
• ·         newspaper articles
• ·         magazine articles
• ·         reference book articles
• ·         pictures
• ·         websites

Underneath the tabs is a navigation key. The key shows colored book icons indicating reading level. There are also icons for images and pdf documents. The other icons show the interactivity of the links

Opening up articles reveals some cool features. First on the top is a read aloud tool that is easy to use so even the lowest readers can get information from the article. The only difficulty I found was that a general search topic like lion brings up a lot of articles like Detroit lions, Sea Lion etc. For younger students this can be a little confusing.

22)Useful Features:

Country Facts Link: I click on the country facts link and a page with three options appeared. The user can pick from “Country Facts”, “State Facts”, and Canada Facts”. I select the County Facts A-Z List. A list of countries appeared. I picked the country Belize.

The Belize page contained a quick facts page that consisted of four parts. First section was consisted of basic facts:

• ·         County name
• ·         Capital
• ·         Population
• ·         Country size
• ·         Continent

·         General  country characteristics

The second section contained a quick fact section covering the major events in the history of the country. The third section consisted of a map of the country and flag of the country. In this section is also is a link to additional information about the country. This takes the user to basic search result interface.  The final section at the bottom of the page provides additional links to outside web pages like the U.S Department of State country background information.

3) Maps of the World Link:

This link gives the user access to many types of maps. There were general political maps, Historical maps and outline maps that students could use to build their own maps. In my curriculum one of the areas I need to teach is reference materials which include the use of an atlas. This link could help with that instruction.  

4) Other Area Link: 

I chose the A+ Skills Discoverer. In this area a student would have six areas to choose from:

• ·         Art
• ·         Health
• ·         Language Arts
• ·         Math
• ·         Science
• ·         Social Studies

When you click on one of these links a subject are specific menu appears which gives the user more specific choices.  For example within Language Arts were choices like Authors, Reading, etc. In the reading area appears a flash video that give the user more choices. These links sent users to outside websites.

SIRS Issues Researcher:

1Leading issue:

 I picked the issue of the Keystone Pipeline. In this area I found two main parts. The top part was a quick over view section that provided an overview of the issue and pros and cons about the issue. This section also provides to an interactive section with even more infromation.

At the bottom of this page was article list. This area was a standard search result section. This area list article links to the selected topic.

2Curriculum Pathfinders:

In this area there is a navigation bar across the top that gives the user curriculum areas to choose from:

• ·         Math
• ·         Science
• ·         Social Studies
• ·         Language Arts
• ·         Fine Arts
• ·         Health

When you hover over these links the bottom portion changes and provides three different navigation panels. On the left side is a “My Courses”. The middle section is a “Research Ideas” area. Then the right panel gives a preview of interactive pages that fit the selection

Common Core Connections:

The Core Content Standard I chose is W.3.& Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.

I have been working on this area in my 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th grade classes. Each student is getting ready to build a PowerPoint presentation on a topic of their choosing. The first step was for students to pick 3 to 5 topics of personal interest. The students then used a graphic organizer to survey the world book kids and student encyclopedias. They were then to select the topic they found to be the most interesting and use that topic to search SIRS Discover.  They would use a graphic organizer to search this site as well.

My second and third graders will get the experience of search a research type database. The main thing they will use in the SIRS research database will be the graphics tab. They will pull these images into their websites. Since the 2^nd and 3^rd grade research standards requires them to use one reference they will be using the world book site for their primary research source. Fourth graders need to have more than one source for their research. So they will be using both the World Book and SIRS. 

Lesson 3 -- Learning Express Library

Lesson 3 -- Learning Express Library

Basic Discovery Exercise:

I went into the career center and I took the Culinary Arts Practice Exam. I took the first twenty questions. The exam consisted of 100 multiple choice and true false questions. The format was a traditional exam. I think this format works for a preliminary assessment of general knowledge. In the area of Culinary Arts it would a good assessment for determining further learning.

I went into a career center and looked into the Green Career and Firefighting. The resources presented were an e-document. Basically both documents were books presented in a PDF format. The books were comprehensive in nature. They included information about the training needed for occupation. Finding Financing for the needed education needed for the occupation. Final part of the training materials describes what is needed to getting a job in the area and how to succeed after getting the job.

I then did a search for different occupations like carpenter and electrician there wasn't any information. The occupations listed on the left navigation panel are the only areas covered in the website. Picking a training area they have listed provides multiple things to select from. In the nursing area for example the search provided test preparation materials, practice tests, and content area e-books.

Overall I think the Learning Express Library is a valuable tool for learning about the given occupations that were listed within the tool. People that have specific interest in the listed careers would really benefit from this tool.

Common Core Connections:

RL.4.1 Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

I went into the School Center and looked at elementary school reading. The reading assessments covered information text, narrative text, persuasive reading, poetry reading and general reading. The way I would uses this to support common core would be to practice online tests. This format will help kids get ready for the Smarted Balance Testing coming up in spring.