Lesson 2 SIRS Discoverer/Issue Researcher.

I looked up armadillos and found many articles about them--some easy, some a little more detailed. I did find an article that had the camera meaning there were pictures but the pictures were only available with the original article. How/can you get the original article to see the pictures. I would have liked to see the pictures the article was talking about. I'm thinking others would too.

The database feature is very nice to have, students can chose the topic they are researching and find the subject they are looking for. I chose Madagascar in the Country Facts feature and the information there was very easy to read. It had information about the population, life expectancy, and history of the country; all in a format that is easy to read and find what your looking for. Excellent research source!

The maps feature will be very useful to history and geography students (and their parents) as a source to find basic information on different countries.

I also looked at Biographies and thought this too was very informative. I chose Thomas Edison and it showed many articles about him. One article had an activity that asked questions to involve the student and help them understand and apply what they've read.

The SIRS Researcher is top notch! Very indepth articles about every topic you can think of--very good resouce for informative speeches/debates and research papers. The research tools are excellent because it helps students keep track of/organize their research.

The Cirriculum Pathfinders was a surprise--a very nice surprise--I didn't know you could take a course in Computer Technology! WOW. This will be great for students to help them in their studies and to help them find out what they're really interested in!! Love this feature! I did look at some that were just articles about computer technology, but these would still help students find out more about subjects their interested in.

Lesson 1c World Book Foreign Language Edition.

The foreign language edition is great! This is especially useful to student/patrons who are visiting and don't speak our language well. Again, this would be a very useful tool for students studying Spanish or French to practice reading the language. The read aloud feature would be helpful to those not sure how to pronounce certain words. Overall, an awesome feature to provide!

Lesson 1b World Book Online

I chose the alpaca this time. It lives in the Andes Mountains of South America. They eat grass and other plants.

The information from Info Finder is definately more detailed than World Book Online Kids. Info Finder gave specific areas you can find alpacas.

Wow! The Reference Center is full of information! I searched the Czech Republic which is close to what I searched before, Czechoslovakia. The side bars are very user friendly, patrons can click on the specific subtopic they are looking for instead of searching the whole article, as well as having other sources to search--loved to questions asked about my topic, it made me think about what I had read! If I couldn't remember seeing anything about the question, I went back to see if I could find it.

Again, these sites are excellent resouces for research. The information gets more detailed as you progress in school/life. Students and patrons will have a very useful tool if they utilize them!

Lesson 1a World Book School Edition

1. The mammal I chose was the platypus which is found in Australia, lives along streams, and digs burrows in the banks of streams. World Book Kids is a very easy to use resource--excellent for young children. I will have my children use this resource for their research.

2. World Book Student is also very easy to use. Elementary students will find this resource very useful as they are required to do more research for classes. I seached the platypus and found basically the same information, just in more detail. I also like that they have the tools to save the article to their specific research, translate the article, and to have the article read to them.

3. I searched Czechoslovakia on World Book Advanced. The information there was excellent, very informative and would be useful for high school students and their research papers. I liked that there were other search results and related articles/information on the subject.

4. I found with World Book Discover that at least looking for information on the american gov't, it was easier to search by that name then by clicking the topic "history and gov't." But the fact is that no matter what you search for you could easily translate the article to a different language. This would help anyone who didn't speak or read English. I think this would be an awesome tool for foreign language classes to help students in their reading and understanding new languages.

I just listened to the read aloud option and thought it was a little too "computer" sounding to me. I guess I had envisioned it to be a little more like someone was reading to me. The "define" option it nice too--it will help students not familiar with a word to get a quick definition.

Definitely great research sites and tools!