1. I changed the default “full text” search to “keyword” search and used “Nebraska” as the search term. (I thought it would be interesting to compare these results later to those in exercise #3.)
Search returned list of 61 ebooks including titles published by the University of Nebraska. The list included familiar authors (e.g., Willa Cather) and titles (e.g., Orphan Trains). Personally the brown and red book icons are BORING…like those huge uninviting sets of dusty old hardcover books in the reference section of an academic library.
Adding the limiter “fiction” reduced the list of titles to 8.
I was slightly frustrated by not being able to quickly scan a brief list of titles (aka, titles only) – I would feel similar frustrations later when I retrieved really l-o-n-g lists…frustrated about not having alphabetical access to the list OR not having more choices than only 4 consecutive pages in the results list OR not having a way to jump say 5 or 10 screens ahead/backward OR to zip quickly to the end or beginning of the results list.
However, I was intrigued by some of the titles in this results list and thought some would be fun to read IFF I really had the time to do so, as in being retired!
I viewed O PIONEERS. I was surprised by unexpected hyphenated words in the middle of lines. I wasn’t sure if these had been originally written that way by the author, or just a default repeat use of the hyphen that was at the end of the line in the original text that was automatically kept when the page was digitized and reformatted.
I did notice the little purple box showing RANK and wondered what it was about. Relevance? Later I would click on the drop arrow and discover that my choices for displaying the list was by rank, title, author, newest first, and oldest first.
Then I viewed BLUE HOTEL by Stephen Crane. OMG. What a story. Hard to believe this was written in 1898. Because I’m Swedish, my sympathies were with “The Swede.” But the story is far more complicated than mere genealogy. Like I said, WHAT A STORY!!! Does anyone write this well anymore? WOW. I think this would be great to use with high school students.
I wanted to save the story but was unable to highlight and select (aka, copy & paste) it into a word document. Printing it only printed a portion of what I could see on the screen.
2. I used the keyword search “Constitution” and retrieved 13 ebooks, including one about the Constitution of Japan. Then I added the keyword “fiction” and that brought up NO matches. A third full text search for “Constitution” brought up 3,110 titles. (Repeat frustration from above re: not being able to skim or jump through a list of titles.)
Number 3 in the list was Our Elusive Constitution by Daniel Hoffman that did sound like it would be interesting to read. I viewed that book, too, and especially liked being able to see the book contents list at left.
I skimmed a few of the first pages of the book. I had to chuckle at the last sentence of the preface on Page x that reads: “I cannot resist suggesting that the People of the United State, and especially the Framers of the Constitution, are particularly responsible for the remaining flaws of this book.” If the author did write his book with this sort of humor, perhaps this would be both an informative and engaging book to read.
3. I selected the Advanced Search option, typed “Nebraska” as Publisher and retrieved 56 ebooks (vs. 61 ebooks in Exercise #1 using a keyword search.) Again, I wish I could have viewed or printed a simple list of titles without summaries or additional information. Some interesting titles and familiar author names here: Moon of Popping Trees, Choteau Creek, WigWam Evenings, Erdrich, Dorris, etc.
For fun I added more qualifiers: Nebraska +Dakota = 12 results; Nebraska +Lakota = 3 results; Nebraska +Sioux=10 results.
I decided to try using the SORT BY feature. I searched: All + Ebooks +English then sorted by NEWEST FIRST. Even though there were 5,511 in the results list, this list gave me a whole different array of titles including People at Work, Pitch and Throw, Grasp and Know: What is a Synonym, [Interestingly, only now as I am trying to find all the little notes I wrote while doing this search, do I notice that these results pages printed with minimal information as compared to the paragraphs printed in my initial searches…is this a function of the number of results?]
BTW, I really like having the covers shown in the results list.
Clicking through pages of titles, many looked pretty interesting –how would I have ever known that Cooking the Russian Way and Cooking the Thai Way are in NetLibrary. Who knows how many other cook books are in NetLibrary? I don’t…and it didn’t occur to me then in the middle of that sequence to use the keyword “cooking” but maybe I will do that the next time I “play” in NetLibrary.
After more exploring with various screens and finding some Spanish titles in the results, I tried to limit my results to titles in Spanish. My eye caught some box at right of the screen. It directed me to use “In Our Collection.”
When I used full text = Spanish and keyword = Spanish, I retrieved 3,112 titles. (Ah, yes, how to browse more than 3K titles….mmmmm). Then I used an advanced search with econtent language = Spanish and retrieved 39 titles. I can deal with a list that size. Then I added the keyword “juvenile” and retrieved a list of 38 titles.
I picked a title to view, then looked through a series of its pages. (I have a very limited knowledge of Spanish.) I was somewhat turned off by the plain vanilla text format but was nicely surprised to see full color illustrations, too.
I decided to play with the dictionary option at left of the screen. At first I chuckled as I wondered just how useful an English dictionary was going to be translating text written in Spanish. Soon I realized that the drop down menu included both an English-to-Spanish dictionary and a Spanish-to-English dictionary.
The first word I tried to have translated was “regresar.” I’d hoped that all I had to do was highlight the word to translate it, but I had to type it in the search box. “Regresar” turned out to be a verb (I was pretty sure of that to start with) without a definition in the dictionary.
Even so, I could click the sound icon and hear the word spoken…over and over and over again until I clicked the pause icon on the popup audio box. I kept inserting various words from the text until I was able to find one that had a definition. Dictionary entries often had lots of information that looked useful to a Spanish student: various definitions, idioms and idiomatic phrases, etc.
I like to think that our Spanish teacher might find that some of these juvenile books in Spanish might be useful in her high school Spanish classes. I’ve already contacted her about showing her NetLibrary on Wednesday.
Once again, as in past weeks, the more I explored this week’s resource, the more cool stuff I found. NetLibrary doesn’t seem to have the same bells and whistles as previous resources, but I am impressed just the same.
I have a number of friends who might find that NetLibrary offers them a wide variety of titles for their reading interests and pleasure.
Admittedly I need to practice my searching skills to find something specific that I need but I certainly didn’t have any trouble finding titles that I might like.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Lesson 5 - Gale Virtual Reference Library
1 I picked the UXL Encyclopedia of World Mythology from the SHOW ALL list, then used the drop down menu to find the volume with H for Heracles/Hercules. I really liked that the dropdown menu showed both the volume number AND alphabetical range for the volume. I also really liked the page appearance of this resource. Not cluttered, easy to read font and font size on white background. Article was informative and readable. The article was useful because it provided basic but complete information about this hero. I recently had the sudden opportunity to watch the Disney movie Hercules with a group of sixth graders. I hadn’t seen the movie before and didn’t remember anything about this hero. After the movie, I googled a Wikipedia article about the movie that said the Disney version was not close to the traditional myth. The information in this encyclopedia article was a more accurate and complete description of the mythical character known as Heracles/Hercules.
2. I typed the words “foods cholesterol” in the “Basic Search” search box. One article was retrieved: Cholesterol, High” in the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, v. 2, p. 867-870. I found the article very readable and easy to understand, with lots of useful and NEW TO ME information. The voice in the “Read to Me” feature sounded female and real (not computer generated). In fact, “she” sounded a bit like Jane Fonda, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. Another time I will try listening to another article, just to see if that voice also is (or, sounds) female and whether it has as natural a sound as this one. At first I was uncertain how to stop the voice, and even though I thought I had stopped the voice, it restarted seemingly on its own. Eventually I discovered the stop start and pause icons and their mouse-over labels and was able to stop the “read to me” feature. I think this is a wonderful feature for lots of people of any age, reading, vision, and/or language abilities. The sound quality of this voice was much, much better than the audio version of an earlier database we explored.
3. I agree with JeanWKLibrary that Gale is extensive and certainly could be overwhelming. But I found this resource very user friendly, with lots of nice helpful features that aren’t hard to understand, find or use. Once the access issues from school were resolved, I now know that Gale is easily accessed from either school or home. I know there are even more resources on the Gale list that I will like to use—like Kids InfoBits. I “stumbled” into it several weeks ago and really, really liked it then, but will confess I did not review it again for this week. But I KNOW I’m going to tell our Spanish teacher about the “language” features of Gale, and will certainly advise other teachers about GALE and Kids InfoBits.
I am curious about Moon Musing’s tip about using the PMID (Proquest Media Identifier) to limit a search to just one publication. I’m running out of daylight and energy tonight so I will put that on my TO TRY LATER list.
2. I typed the words “foods cholesterol” in the “Basic Search” search box. One article was retrieved: Cholesterol, High” in the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, v. 2, p. 867-870. I found the article very readable and easy to understand, with lots of useful and NEW TO ME information. The voice in the “Read to Me” feature sounded female and real (not computer generated). In fact, “she” sounded a bit like Jane Fonda, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. Another time I will try listening to another article, just to see if that voice also is (or, sounds) female and whether it has as natural a sound as this one. At first I was uncertain how to stop the voice, and even though I thought I had stopped the voice, it restarted seemingly on its own. Eventually I discovered the stop start and pause icons and their mouse-over labels and was able to stop the “read to me” feature. I think this is a wonderful feature for lots of people of any age, reading, vision, and/or language abilities. The sound quality of this voice was much, much better than the audio version of an earlier database we explored.
3. I agree with JeanWKLibrary that Gale is extensive and certainly could be overwhelming. But I found this resource very user friendly, with lots of nice helpful features that aren’t hard to understand, find or use. Once the access issues from school were resolved, I now know that Gale is easily accessed from either school or home. I know there are even more resources on the Gale list that I will like to use—like Kids InfoBits. I “stumbled” into it several weeks ago and really, really liked it then, but will confess I did not review it again for this week. But I KNOW I’m going to tell our Spanish teacher about the “language” features of Gale, and will certainly advise other teachers about GALE and Kids InfoBits.
I am curious about Moon Musing’s tip about using the PMID (Proquest Media Identifier) to limit a search to just one publication. I’m running out of daylight and energy tonight so I will put that on my TO TRY LATER list.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Lesson 5 - GALE VIRTUAL REFERENCE
Two cents' worth on my first attempt to GVRL from school.
FIRST CENT: my first attempt to access GVRL was frustratingly futile, even though I expected access to be quick and easy from school, more than from home.
I used my usual SDLN local library card login info thinking that was how I was supposed to log in to GVRL but, alas, that did not work. Is/will it always be this difficult to access? Is there a secret handshake I'm missing?
I even toggled between various Challenge screens to see if I had missed some info bit about a new way to access this database, but, as always in a pressure situation, I could not find any clues. I'm not saying the info didn't exist, just that I couldn't find any in this "pressure/stressed" setting.
I will try again, from school and/or from home.
SECOND CENT: One MORE thing that bothered me was the screen that came up after clicking the GALE icon link in the alphabetical list.
I could see CENGAGE Learning on a tab in the upper left and INFOTRAC in large font in the center on the page but NO MENTION of GALE or GVRL on this screen. It was pretty colored text (I like blue) on a clean white background but was I in the right place for GVRL? I had NO WAY OF KNOWING. I never like that kind of dissonance when I am researching.
Worse yet, I'm pretty confident that if students and teachers here ran into that screen or had problems logging in, that they would NEVER come back to this database. Never ever.
Eventually I discovered a similar screen (associated with the Written Tutorial info) THAT DID include the word GALE as well as the words "InfoTrac" and "Cengage." THEN I knew I was on the right trac. (Sorry for the pun.) That's a good thing. But this detour still didn't help me access the GVRL database.
Perhaps I am just an old fuddy duddy who is persnickety about consistency and details, but I think that the name GALE should be visible on that first page after the alphabetical list so users can be confident they are in the right sequence of screens.
I'm frustrated but I WILL try again later.
FIRST CENT: my first attempt to access GVRL was frustratingly futile, even though I expected access to be quick and easy from school, more than from home.
I used my usual SDLN local library card login info thinking that was how I was supposed to log in to GVRL but, alas, that did not work. Is/will it always be this difficult to access? Is there a secret handshake I'm missing?
I even toggled between various Challenge screens to see if I had missed some info bit about a new way to access this database, but, as always in a pressure situation, I could not find any clues. I'm not saying the info didn't exist, just that I couldn't find any in this "pressure/stressed" setting.
I will try again, from school and/or from home.
SECOND CENT: One MORE thing that bothered me was the screen that came up after clicking the GALE icon link in the alphabetical list.
I could see CENGAGE Learning on a tab in the upper left and INFOTRAC in large font in the center on the page but NO MENTION of GALE or GVRL on this screen. It was pretty colored text (I like blue) on a clean white background but was I in the right place for GVRL? I had NO WAY OF KNOWING. I never like that kind of dissonance when I am researching.
Worse yet, I'm pretty confident that if students and teachers here ran into that screen or had problems logging in, that they would NEVER come back to this database. Never ever.
Eventually I discovered a similar screen (associated with the Written Tutorial info) THAT DID include the word GALE as well as the words "InfoTrac" and "Cengage." THEN I knew I was on the right trac. (Sorry for the pun.) That's a good thing. But this detour still didn't help me access the GVRL database.
Perhaps I am just an old fuddy duddy who is persnickety about consistency and details, but I think that the name GALE should be visible on that first page after the alphabetical list so users can be confident they are in the right sequence of screens.
I'm frustrated but I WILL try again later.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Proquest - Lesson 4
Hooray! One click in the alphabetical list and I am at PROQUEST. WooHoo! Thank you to Jane, the techies, and everyone else who made that possible!!!
1. The search terms “Iron Deficiency” Retrieved 2363 documents.
First article listed was from CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE, dated March 2011. Second article was from THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF NUTRITION, dated Feb. 28, 2011. Both showed that abstracts were available. I was (and am) impressed by how current these results are. I had to go down to the NINTH item to find one that was dated Feb 12, 2011 which is today’s date and the same date I am searching the PROQUEST DATABASE.
The first four items in the results list had Abstracts only (no wonder considering that all their publication dates are--as of this posting, still “in the future”) but the fifth through tenth items on this first page of search results had both Abstracts and Full text capabilities.
Since these were all a bit over my head and for the sake of comparison, I considered using one of the “Suggested Topics” that shown in a box above the first page of results. Three Suggested Topics seemed to be promising: Iron and Nutrition (2363 articles) Iron and Dietary supplements (304 documents), Iron and Diet (2078 articles).
When I selected the narrower topic "Iron and Dietary supplements" I first noticed the “Narrow Your Results By: Topic, Date, Publication, About” option. Also at the bottom of that box I saw a number I didn’t totally understand that said 1-8 of 56 (sorted by number of documents). But once I clicked on the NEXT arrow and the next 9-16 narrower yet topics appeared, I understood that there were 56 different narrower terms I could select.
I selected the #16 result in the list: “Pumping Up Your Iron” in Better Nutrition (Nov 2009), available in abstract, full text, and full text PDF. This was very readable and contained useful information to a general reader like me.
I browsed through several screens of results. Most were from research publications and therefore beyond my ken, I appreciated that this caliber of current information was so readily accessible from my home computer. I can see various options on the screen by which I could change my results pages: the tabs at the top of the page, the list of DATABASES SELECTED, and the SOURCES Tabs below the “Narrow your results” options.
For example, by changing from “All Sources” (304 results) to the other source options, my results changed as follows: Scholarly Journals (255 documents); Magazines (31 documents); Trade Publications (16 documents); and, Newspapers (2 documents).
Other options on the screen include: email, cite, or export any results marked; select only the full-text items; and, sort by “most recent first” or most relevant first.”
WHAT A POWERFUL RESOURCE THIS IS. Of course, I already knew that. But nevertheless, I am impressed.
1a. THANKS to Kriscat for articulating how online professional journals can help keep us connected to other library professionals.
THANKS, too, to SMSEaglesLibrary for reminding me to check S for School in the publications list as in discussion item #2 below. (Another duh on my part!) It is VERY NICE to know that School Library Journal is on this list….Now I’ll have to check out what other titles I missed.
2. Publications.
WOW. What a list!
I started by using various library words as title first words. L for Library: 14 titles. B for Book: 3 titles. B for Bulletin took me to BCCB…from 1998 on but delayed one year, H for Horn Book, 2 titles. R for Reading: 4 titles. R for Ranger Rick: coverage ended in 2002. (Sad - that would have been good for my elementary teachers.) N for National Geographic: 5 titles but delayed three months. C for Children: 2 titles.
Soon I’m browsing lists more for both professional and personal reading titles. I find the NYTimes Book Review (WOW); various NPR editions (I’m an NPR junkie, so this great!) including Weekend Editions for Saturday, Sunday, ATC; USA Today. Much, much more than I will ever find time to read, but that is a good problem.
Then I start looking for grocery aisle magazines that I never buy but read in the beauty shop: Red Book, Sunset, Family Handyman, Better Homes and Gardens, and then I keep browsing for more. Some are on the list, some are not, and some are no longer current. None were really necessary for school/academic research but I checked anyway.
There’s a LOT here…I was impressed by what seemed like a lot of FULL TEXT notations ---but I didn’t keep an official and/or complete tally. It did seem that more titles were full text than I being so in similar lists 10-15 years ago.
I’m thinking that I might be able to first entice a few teachers to explore PROQUEST as a way to read publications that are of personal interest to them. With luck, perhaps they will then self-discover the benefits of using PROQUEST with their students in more academic endeavors.
1. The search terms “Iron Deficiency” Retrieved 2363 documents.
First article listed was from CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE, dated March 2011. Second article was from THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF NUTRITION, dated Feb. 28, 2011. Both showed that abstracts were available. I was (and am) impressed by how current these results are. I had to go down to the NINTH item to find one that was dated Feb 12, 2011 which is today’s date and the same date I am searching the PROQUEST DATABASE.
The first four items in the results list had Abstracts only (no wonder considering that all their publication dates are--as of this posting, still “in the future”) but the fifth through tenth items on this first page of search results had both Abstracts and Full text capabilities.
Since these were all a bit over my head and for the sake of comparison, I considered using one of the “Suggested Topics” that shown in a box above the first page of results. Three Suggested Topics seemed to be promising: Iron and Nutrition (2363 articles) Iron and Dietary supplements (304 documents), Iron and Diet (2078 articles).
When I selected the narrower topic "Iron and Dietary supplements" I first noticed the “Narrow Your Results By: Topic, Date, Publication, About” option. Also at the bottom of that box I saw a number I didn’t totally understand that said 1-8 of 56 (sorted by number of documents). But once I clicked on the NEXT arrow and the next 9-16 narrower yet topics appeared, I understood that there were 56 different narrower terms I could select.
I selected the #16 result in the list: “Pumping Up Your Iron” in Better Nutrition (Nov 2009), available in abstract, full text, and full text PDF. This was very readable and contained useful information to a general reader like me.
I browsed through several screens of results. Most were from research publications and therefore beyond my ken, I appreciated that this caliber of current information was so readily accessible from my home computer. I can see various options on the screen by which I could change my results pages: the tabs at the top of the page, the list of DATABASES SELECTED, and the SOURCES Tabs below the “Narrow your results” options.
For example, by changing from “All Sources” (304 results) to the other source options, my results changed as follows: Scholarly Journals (255 documents); Magazines (31 documents); Trade Publications (16 documents); and, Newspapers (2 documents).
Other options on the screen include: email, cite, or export any results marked; select only the full-text items; and, sort by “most recent first” or most relevant first.”
WHAT A POWERFUL RESOURCE THIS IS. Of course, I already knew that. But nevertheless, I am impressed.
1a. THANKS to Kriscat for articulating how online professional journals can help keep us connected to other library professionals.
THANKS, too, to SMSEaglesLibrary for reminding me to check S for School in the publications list as in discussion item #2 below. (Another duh on my part!) It is VERY NICE to know that School Library Journal is on this list….Now I’ll have to check out what other titles I missed.
2. Publications.
WOW. What a list!
I started by using various library words as title first words. L for Library: 14 titles. B for Book: 3 titles. B for Bulletin took me to BCCB…from 1998 on but delayed one year, H for Horn Book, 2 titles. R for Reading: 4 titles. R for Ranger Rick: coverage ended in 2002. (Sad - that would have been good for my elementary teachers.) N for National Geographic: 5 titles but delayed three months. C for Children: 2 titles.
Soon I’m browsing lists more for both professional and personal reading titles. I find the NYTimes Book Review (WOW); various NPR editions (I’m an NPR junkie, so this great!) including Weekend Editions for Saturday, Sunday, ATC; USA Today. Much, much more than I will ever find time to read, but that is a good problem.
Then I start looking for grocery aisle magazines that I never buy but read in the beauty shop: Red Book, Sunset, Family Handyman, Better Homes and Gardens, and then I keep browsing for more. Some are on the list, some are not, and some are no longer current. None were really necessary for school/academic research but I checked anyway.
There’s a LOT here…I was impressed by what seemed like a lot of FULL TEXT notations ---but I didn’t keep an official and/or complete tally. It did seem that more titles were full text than I being so in similar lists 10-15 years ago.
I’m thinking that I might be able to first entice a few teachers to explore PROQUEST as a way to read publications that are of personal interest to them. With luck, perhaps they will then self-discover the benefits of using PROQUEST with their students in more academic endeavors.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
SIRS
SIRS DISCOVERER
Once again I got to click on the alphabetical list to get to another alphabetical list BEFORE I could get to the real SIRS page. Aarrgghhh.
SIRS DISCOVERER 1
ANIMAL: I searched "Wolverine" by subject because I did not want any actors who played characters by that name or any articles related to the Michigan football team.
Nine articles were listed in order by the default criteria (i.e., publication date): 2 at the Challenging reading level; 5 at the Moderate reading level; 2 at the Easy reading level. I was able to list them in order by Lexile or reading level. It was also possible to order them by name of publication or article title. Each listing had the yellow apple icon for subject headings while 7 of the 9 had the camera icon for graphics.
I realize that for this aged audience, short and sweet information is about all they can handle. But I know from a documentary about scientists tracking wolverines, that the very existence of this animal is highly threatened. One or two of the articles were more specific in describing this critical situation. Most others made it sound like wolverines are commonplace and under no pressure.
How can we ever teach students to be citizens who care about preserving animal populations and protecting our environment when they think life is and always will be wonderful because school resources and reports oversimplify everything.
DATABASE: COUNTRY: I selected EGYPT since it is so much in the news now.
I'm impressed by the clean outline of information on this country's page. I like the 3 levels of difficulty in the Graphic Organizers. I think teachers would find those organizers very useful with students
DATABASE: MAPS OF THE WORLD: I selected EGYPT again, as above.
I like the search icons, the specific search box, and the browsable alphabetical icons on the initial MAPS page.
The specific search for EGYPT brought up a list of 17 different maps related to current and past Egyptian history. One map had a link to a pdf file and links to articles related to the information on the map, but not all maps offered these features. I presume that the all the maps could be saved or printed, but I did not want to either save or print the maps on my home computer.
DATABASE: EDUCATOR'S RESOURCES. Here were these four sections of resources: Information Literacy Training Materials (including Citation Guidelines for APA, MLA, and Turabian and a Fair Use Checklist--both very important for me as well as other teachers who care about such practices!); Educator's Guides and Curriculum Support; Student Inquiry and Discovery Activities; and, General Information and Support.
I will be using these Info Lit materials with the classes I teach.
SIRS ISSUES RESEARCHER
WOW...what a list of issues! I'm impressed. I didn't spend a long time on the Researcher homepage but it looked clean and useful with some interesting links.
1: SIRS ISSUES RESEARCHER: LEADING ISSUE: I selected Health Care Reform
Just out of curiousity, I went looking for an article about the latest (second) court ruling against our Health Care legislation. Since the ruling came out only yesterday (Jan. 31), it did not show up. BUt an article about the previous negative court ruling on Dec. 13, 2010 was in the list. The newest article was Jan. 20, 2011.
Once again, the halftruths, quartertruths, eighthtruths and blatant lies about health care promulgated by the opponents of health care reform from the right, far right, extreme right, insurance companies, for-profit medical corporations outtolunch conservatives, teaparties and outright idiots are given equal footing and numbers with the objective and honest proponents of health care reform. Quantity is never the same as quality or objectivity or truth.
Just because the right says it, doesn't make it truthful or honest. Articles from all their mouthpiece publishers are not worth the paper or bits they are printed on.
The Critical Thinking and Analysis questions in this list seem loaded to reward ignorance and oversimplification of the issue.
Does this critical thinking section give any information about the political and social agendas of the groups represented by the authors of the articles? Probably not. Critical analysis requires that the reader know where on the political spectrum the authors are coming from, why they are saying what they say, and what corporations are funding them.
2. SIRS ISSUES RESEARCHER: CURRICULUM PATHFINDERS
Lots here!
"My Courses" and "Research Ideas" lists for each of the following Course Subjects: Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, Fine Arts, and Health.
For fun I picked the "Research Idea" CHILDREN'S LITERATURE under LANGUAGE ARTS. Got list of 286 results including 44 websites. The first articles that were listed on the page at right went from "E-Seuss" to "Censorship" to "Roald Dahl" to "Beverly Cleary" to "Dark Side of the Very Hungry Caterpillar" and more. Would love just to have the time to browse. I did speed reach the "Dark Side" article. Personally, I think the article author (not Eric Carle) was stretching the truth a bit here for his own self-gratification. Carle is NOT the only well-known twentieth century author to have survived the horrors of war. Nevertheless, it is interesting to know just how much adversity some of our lit heroes have overcome.
Links on the page include Quick Search, Advanced Search, Topic Browse, Database Features, My List, Dictionary, Thesaurus, Educator's Resources, Standards Correlations, Help, See Also subjects, Sort results by Date, Relevance, Lexile (high-low, low-high).
Source types include newspapers, magazines, gov't docs, viewpoints, reference, graphics/media, and webselect sites.
Seems like this could be very useful to students and teachers. Seems like this would simplify research over getting a kajillion hits on a google search. More importantly, these should be quality resources, too.
This will be a fun resource to share with teachers and students.
Once again I got to click on the alphabetical list to get to another alphabetical list BEFORE I could get to the real SIRS page. Aarrgghhh.
SIRS DISCOVERER 1
ANIMAL: I searched "Wolverine" by subject because I did not want any actors who played characters by that name or any articles related to the Michigan football team.
Nine articles were listed in order by the default criteria (i.e., publication date): 2 at the Challenging reading level; 5 at the Moderate reading level; 2 at the Easy reading level. I was able to list them in order by Lexile or reading level. It was also possible to order them by name of publication or article title. Each listing had the yellow apple icon for subject headings while 7 of the 9 had the camera icon for graphics.
I realize that for this aged audience, short and sweet information is about all they can handle. But I know from a documentary about scientists tracking wolverines, that the very existence of this animal is highly threatened. One or two of the articles were more specific in describing this critical situation. Most others made it sound like wolverines are commonplace and under no pressure.
How can we ever teach students to be citizens who care about preserving animal populations and protecting our environment when they think life is and always will be wonderful because school resources and reports oversimplify everything.
DATABASE: COUNTRY: I selected EGYPT since it is so much in the news now.
I'm impressed by the clean outline of information on this country's page. I like the 3 levels of difficulty in the Graphic Organizers. I think teachers would find those organizers very useful with students
DATABASE: MAPS OF THE WORLD: I selected EGYPT again, as above.
I like the search icons, the specific search box, and the browsable alphabetical icons on the initial MAPS page.
The specific search for EGYPT brought up a list of 17 different maps related to current and past Egyptian history. One map had a link to a pdf file and links to articles related to the information on the map, but not all maps offered these features. I presume that the all the maps could be saved or printed, but I did not want to either save or print the maps on my home computer.
DATABASE: EDUCATOR'S RESOURCES. Here were these four sections of resources: Information Literacy Training Materials (including Citation Guidelines for APA, MLA, and Turabian and a Fair Use Checklist--both very important for me as well as other teachers who care about such practices!); Educator's Guides and Curriculum Support; Student Inquiry and Discovery Activities; and, General Information and Support.
I will be using these Info Lit materials with the classes I teach.
SIRS ISSUES RESEARCHER
WOW...what a list of issues! I'm impressed. I didn't spend a long time on the Researcher homepage but it looked clean and useful with some interesting links.
1: SIRS ISSUES RESEARCHER: LEADING ISSUE: I selected Health Care Reform
Just out of curiousity, I went looking for an article about the latest (second) court ruling against our Health Care legislation. Since the ruling came out only yesterday (Jan. 31), it did not show up. BUt an article about the previous negative court ruling on Dec. 13, 2010 was in the list. The newest article was Jan. 20, 2011.
Once again, the halftruths, quartertruths, eighthtruths and blatant lies about health care promulgated by the opponents of health care reform from the right, far right, extreme right, insurance companies, for-profit medical corporations outtolunch conservatives, teaparties and outright idiots are given equal footing and numbers with the objective and honest proponents of health care reform. Quantity is never the same as quality or objectivity or truth.
Just because the right says it, doesn't make it truthful or honest. Articles from all their mouthpiece publishers are not worth the paper or bits they are printed on.
The Critical Thinking and Analysis questions in this list seem loaded to reward ignorance and oversimplification of the issue.
Does this critical thinking section give any information about the political and social agendas of the groups represented by the authors of the articles? Probably not. Critical analysis requires that the reader know where on the political spectrum the authors are coming from, why they are saying what they say, and what corporations are funding them.
2. SIRS ISSUES RESEARCHER: CURRICULUM PATHFINDERS
Lots here!
"My Courses" and "Research Ideas" lists for each of the following Course Subjects: Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, Fine Arts, and Health.
For fun I picked the "Research Idea" CHILDREN'S LITERATURE under LANGUAGE ARTS. Got list of 286 results including 44 websites. The first articles that were listed on the page at right went from "E-Seuss" to "Censorship" to "Roald Dahl" to "Beverly Cleary" to "Dark Side of the Very Hungry Caterpillar" and more. Would love just to have the time to browse. I did speed reach the "Dark Side" article. Personally, I think the article author (not Eric Carle) was stretching the truth a bit here for his own self-gratification. Carle is NOT the only well-known twentieth century author to have survived the horrors of war. Nevertheless, it is interesting to know just how much adversity some of our lit heroes have overcome.
Links on the page include Quick Search, Advanced Search, Topic Browse, Database Features, My List, Dictionary, Thesaurus, Educator's Resources, Standards Correlations, Help, See Also subjects, Sort results by Date, Relevance, Lexile (high-low, low-high).
Source types include newspapers, magazines, gov't docs, viewpoints, reference, graphics/media, and webselect sites.
Seems like this could be very useful to students and teachers. Seems like this would simplify research over getting a kajillion hits on a google search. More importantly, these should be quality resources, too.
This will be a fun resource to share with teachers and students.
Learning Express Library #2
PS I found it annoying to have to log on repeatedly as I worked my way through the LEL exercise. I logged on once at first and had been using it continuously all along. Having to log on several more times were just unwelcome timeconsuming annoyances.
Lesson 2 - Learning Express Library
As confessed in my second post, I completed the Lesson 2 activities last Monday, but for a number of reasons, I am only now blogging about my experiences.
DISCOVERY EXERCISES 1 & 2
Even befoe I could set up my LEL account, I had to get to LEL.
My first comment in that experience is related to the common statement "All resources can be accessed via this alphabetical list." So I start at the alphabetical list and click on "Learning Express Library" or any other title in the list. Can anyone explain why I have to go to a SECOND alphabetical list of all the same titles and click on "Learning Express Library" AGAIN before I can get to the real "Learning Express Library." As I understand html, there's no reason for that...my first click could take me directly to the resource I've chosen initially. Eliminate one list or another, but don't make the user click twice. What's efficient about having to click twice? This was my frustration also in Week 1 and I expect it again in each week.
Obviously I set up my LEL account and browsed through tests.
At Learning Express, I first choose Learning Centers ELEMENTARY then MATH SKILLS IMPROVEMENT then 4TH GRADE MATH PRACTICE - NUMBER SENSE AND OPERATIONS I test. I chose this particular level because I knew our 4th graders would be taking a national test (I just didn't know it was that week) and that the 4th grade teacher was one who might be willing to explore the online resources. (Sadly, not all teachers at my school might be.)
I logged in as though I were at home rather than at school since I expected to access this resource from home later. Thus I am not certain exactly how a teacher or student will access this at school, since most of our students and perhaps most teachers do NOT have library cards at SDLN libraries.
Under the WHAT DO I DO NOW option in the left column, I'm not sure how many of my school's students/teachers can use the F11 IMPROVE READABILITY option that requires Firefox or IEXP.
Isn't the "Welcome to Your Test Instructions Page!" a bit wordy for 4th graders? I thought it was.
RE the directions: "For more instructions on using and taking this test online, please click the blue "Instructions" button found on the top of the screen within your exam."
DISCOVERY EXERCISES 1 & 2
Even befoe I could set up my LEL account, I had to get to LEL.
My first comment in that experience is related to the common statement "All resources can be accessed via this alphabetical list." So I start at the alphabetical list and click on "Learning Express Library" or any other title in the list. Can anyone explain why I have to go to a SECOND alphabetical list of all the same titles and click on "Learning Express Library" AGAIN before I can get to the real "Learning Express Library." As I understand html, there's no reason for that...my first click could take me directly to the resource I've chosen initially. Eliminate one list or another, but don't make the user click twice. What's efficient about having to click twice? This was my frustration also in Week 1 and I expect it again in each week.
Obviously I set up my LEL account and browsed through tests.
At Learning Express, I first choose Learning Centers ELEMENTARY then MATH SKILLS IMPROVEMENT then 4TH GRADE MATH PRACTICE - NUMBER SENSE AND OPERATIONS I test. I chose this particular level because I knew our 4th graders would be taking a national test (I just didn't know it was that week) and that the 4th grade teacher was one who might be willing to explore the online resources. (Sadly, not all teachers at my school might be.)
I logged in as though I were at home rather than at school since I expected to access this resource from home later. Thus I am not certain exactly how a teacher or student will access this at school, since most of our students and perhaps most teachers do NOT have library cards at SDLN libraries.
Under the WHAT DO I DO NOW option in the left column, I'm not sure how many of my school's students/teachers can use the F11 IMPROVE READABILITY option that requires Firefox or IEXP.
Isn't the "Welcome to Your Test Instructions Page!" a bit wordy for 4th graders? I thought it was.
RE the directions: "For more instructions on using and taking this test online, please click the blue "Instructions" button found on the top of the screen within your exam."
- Why not make the series of screens here printable for a teacher or student instead of having to work through a series of screens?
In the test itself, I thought some of the font was too small for fourth graders to read, particularly when the questions dealt with fractions.
I have no quarrel with the content of this math test (AND was relieved that I could still do 4th grade math) but I did wonder how closely these math problems compared to the statewide math standards for fourth grade. I don't recall seeing anything on the LEL website stating any connection between the tests and any state standards. Seems to be that would be a logical tie-in.
DISCOVERY EXERCISE #3: "Job Search and Workplace Skills"
I chose to work through BUSINESS WRITING: VOCABULARY AND SPELLING COURSE 1. This was an interesting exercise that provided excellent feedback on responses. But I was surprised to find at the bottom of one screen a button that read ENVIE instead of SUBMIT or whatever all the other buttons said at the bottom of the screen. Where did this come from?
I think these exercises would be useful in many classrooms and probably far more rigorous than most of my school's students ever have to complete.
I was curious about the career information. When I looked at the list of areas I was surprised to see AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL on the list.
The following was under "Air Traffic Control Test Prep - AT-SAT Preparation - Air Traffic Controller." This is an abbreviated quote from under that heading: "Demanding, well-paying, rewarding—Is a career in air traffic control for you? This newly created guide gets to the bottom of that question by providing all the essentials on becoming an ATC professional...Full practice tests with thorough review lessons and answer keys—more than 800 sample practice questions! ...
With the number of increasing worldwide flights and a large percentage of the current ATC workforce set to retire, this part–career guide, part–test prep manual offers candidates A-to-Z guidance in a field booming with opportunity."
Boy, that sounds a pretty easy way to such a responsible position now, doesn't it? And to think my daughter went to school FOUR YEARS to get her ATC certification. What a deal LEL must be, eh? Or, pig in a poke on this career.
I was bothered by this test bank making it sound like all a person had to do was to just take the practice test here. No formal study or college courses. Of course, I'm probably just a little more sensitive to this career description. So I tried the career my other child has.
So I looked under LEGAL. Here I notice that under the LEGAL options that the option CAREER GUIDANCE then only two options popup, i.e., paralegal and legal mediator, but NO mention of lawyer at all.
HMMM.
DISCOVERY EXERCISE #4:
Re Directions: Where's the homepage and link at bottom of page to ebooks?
At the search box I could find at upper left, I searched TEACHING and came up with an impressive list of TESTS, COURSES, and EBOOKS.
Under EBOOKS, I selected PASS THE U.S. CITIZENSHIP EXAM, 3RD EDITION because I know someone who will be eligible to apply for citizenship in a year or so. She is quite apprehensive about studying for and passing this exam, so this might be a good resource for her to use.
I didn't realize that I would have to SAVE it to my computer. I wish the LEL showed the size of the document/Ebook that I was considering saving before I already had to save it.
In previewing the materials in this EBook, I think they will be helpful to my friend. There was lots of information about the entire citizenship application process in addition to the exam questions themselves.
When I went back to the search box, I used the search term CITIZENSHIP that brought up five results: 0 tests, 1 course, and 4 ebooks, including the one described above.
The one course listed sounded particularly helpful: Citizenship Test Practice: History & Civics Questions With 100 civics, history, and government questions, this practice test offers all the preparation you need to pass the newly redesigned naturalization test...
There are lots of resources here at LEL for teachers, students, and the general public to use. I intend to bring this resource to the attention of several teachers who might be open to encouraging their students to use them.
Reflections on Blogging
I can see I have a few problems with doing the lesson and blogging about it.
1-It's hard for me to take notes while doing the lesson, particularly avoiding printing copious pages and/or scribbling notes that are hard to decipher later.
Also, despite what I think are sufficient notes, I hate not being able to remember the specific place in the online resource to which my notes pertain.
2-If I DO stay up late to blog right after completing the lesson, my brain is too fuzzy to blog as I'd like or intend.
3-With my schedule, it's not always possible to do the lesson and blog in one setting.
SO, I'm thinking I will try a new strategy: do both simultaneously by having one window open to the lesson and another window open for blogging about the current portion of the lesson.
Doing so may take more than one sitting at the computer to complete each lesson, but perhaps it will work more satisfactorily.
I think I will try it for Lesson 3.
1-It's hard for me to take notes while doing the lesson, particularly avoiding printing copious pages and/or scribbling notes that are hard to decipher later.
Also, despite what I think are sufficient notes, I hate not being able to remember the specific place in the online resource to which my notes pertain.
2-If I DO stay up late to blog right after completing the lesson, my brain is too fuzzy to blog as I'd like or intend.
3-With my schedule, it's not always possible to do the lesson and blog in one setting.
SO, I'm thinking I will try a new strategy: do both simultaneously by having one window open to the lesson and another window open for blogging about the current portion of the lesson.
Doing so may take more than one sitting at the computer to complete each lesson, but perhaps it will work more satisfactorily.
I think I will try it for Lesson 3.
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