I started from the alphabetical list. Honestly, this seemed confusing to me the first time I scrolled through the list. I think the font sizes, line spaces and underlinings could be readjusted to make the choices more clear. Just my personal style preference but I think students will be confused at first too, too.
These are all visually attractive and appealing. World Book Kids and World Book Student seem similar enough for students to easily progress from one to other. It was easy to see how the shorter Kids articles were related to the longer Student articles. I think youngest or first users will be surprised when their results include articles retrieved more by keyword than subject terms. I can see how kids will like the picture icons of animals but I found captions and labels a bit distracting and confusing. I like the links to definitions and audio text but not all keywords had definitions and my audio text had curious echos and voice quality. World Book Advanced screens were attractive. The left sidebars seemed more straightforward and may have greater usefulness to my students. World Book Discover will meet needs of certain students who are not as comfortable in the other versions. So much in each version, each similar yet different than others. It will simply take time for students to get comfortable and skilled with each one. I'm sure all will be able to click through screens but I think it will take longer for them to learn how to locate the info they want or need. At this point tonight, I find the World Book Online pretty similar to the School Edition versions. I think the Spanish teacher at my school will be interested in the Enciclopedia Estudiantil Hallazgos for use with her students. It will also be quite useful to our students with limited English language vocubulary and also interesting to our elementary students taking Spanish.
I like these WB resources. I particularly appreciate that citation information is provided at all levels. The range of options for saving, printing, audio, citations, etc., etc, is great for students.
1 comment:
Welcome to the Electronic Resources Challenge, BookBlgr! Thanks for your report on World Book. You're right--the school and public library editions are very similar, but some of the features and presentation are different. Please do make your Spanish teacher aware of that version. The readaloud tool in that version reads in Spanish! I hope you will feel more comfortable as you continue to dig into WB, and I hope you will try some of the special features, such as "World Book Explains Videos" in Discover and "World of Animals" and "Compare Places" in Kids.
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