Lesson 10 - Wrap Up

I have had an ideal situation while taking this class.  I had my students doing lessons at the same time I was reviewing what I had learned some years ago.  I often find I forget resources unless I repeatedly use them myself.  It was great to repeat this class to review what I had forgotten.  Reviewing while the younger classes were  learning how to use the World Book, Proquest and other electronic resources could not have been better timing.  I would still like to introduce Ancestry to one class as they did some research into family history. 

My goals are the following: 
#1  That Dakota Christian School students use  the electronic resources offered by the state library as our primary sources for research.   I find that it takes constant reminders to the staff  and students that these resources are available.  One staff member did comment that next year she would demand one resource be from the electronic resources that are offered by the state library.  This year I used library time during our reading contest to introduce and review the electronic resources.  It  worked very well since the students had the books they had to read.  No time was needed for check out.

#2 To continue to have the students learn and review the resources available.  I have made work sheets and I hope to evaluate them and make new work sheets to use next year.

I also have a game I would like to do on the last week of school.  We have one set of World Book Encyclopedias in our library.  I am thinking of having one group of students look up a fact in the hard cover set and the other group of students use the World Book online and see who finds the information first.  I have to give this some thought on how to do it.  One of my goals is that the students do realize what an old World Book Encyclopedia was like so they can see the difference. 

I was encouraged last week.  Two fifth grade students, who are cousins and live on the same farm, asked if our library had information on goats since they had new goats on their farm.  We found one book and then I suggested the World Book Encyclopedia online.  Each student wanted an article printed to take home with them.  They knew exactly how to get to the World Book Resource without me helping them. 

Thanks for this Challenge.  I hope to refer back to this class in the future.  I appreciated all your hard work in preparing the lessons!

Lesson 9 -- History and Genealogy Resources—Ancestry Library, Heritage Quest and Sanborn Maps

Lesson 9 -- History and Genealogy Resources—Ancestry Library, Heritage Quest and Sanborn Maps

#1 The Titanic and her sister ship

I took some time to look at this site. In Passenger Ships I typed in Titanic and at the very end of the article I read the name of the sister ship, Olympic. Then I read about the Olympic. It was interesting that after the destruction of the Titanic, they did do some altering of the Olympic which was built as the same time as the Titanic.

#2 This part of the assignment was a bit frustrating. I finally did an advance search and found a large number of results but I accidently left my notes at school and can’t remember the number. However, most of them were obituaries and I think I would need to ask more questions about what the student wanted.

#3. County anniversary and historical information.  

This was a frustrating assignment and since I had to do it at school, I did not spend as much time as I would like. I used Persi and then went to Places. I typed in South Dakota and my county Charles Mix County. Twenty nine articles appear but I am not able to read the articles. Am I doing something wrong? I imagined very concrete information and I tried using the request form and order form but that is not helpful either. I need to spend more time on this.  I should try to understand this site a bit more.

Extra things

I did some personal searching of information in the Ancestry resource. I found several of my grandparents' names. Then I searched my own name. The search was interesting! There are many people with my last name! Maybe it is good that I can only do this at school. I love family history and have traced my husband’s family back to the 1600’s years ago when doing it was free online!

 

 

Lesson 8--ArchiveGrid and CAMIO

Lesson 8--ArchiveGrid and CAMIO

1. Using ArchiveGrid I typed in Nobel Prize Theodore Schultz and the first entry came up with Papers 1933-1988 which are at the Parks Library at Iowa State University.  This entry also gave a description of Schultz and discussed the oleo margarine controversy in 1943 that resulted in the resignation of Schultz from the Department of Economics and Sociology.  I discovered that you could click on other items that brought you to World Cat with the same entry, Papers, 1933-1988. 

2. Using CAMIO  Clothing during the Victorian Era and Charles Dickens

After a bit of frustration I finally typed in dress and the year 1850.  There were 11 results and I did spend some time looking at the pictures of dresses.  Are there any pictures of men’s clothing?  I also typed in clothing (17 results) and fashion (16 results).  For each of these I clicked on 1800.  I tried typing Victorian Era but nothing would come up.  I liked the way you could focus on parts of the outfits if you wanted to look at the details quite close.  This might prove valuable if a school did a play of a certain era.

Lesson 7 -- WorldCat and More FirstSearch Indexes

I have learned quite a few things in my research with the World Cat.

#1 Martin Luther books

When I first looked up Martin Luther I kept getting Martin Luther King items. I tried quotation marks around the words Martin Luther but that did not help. I knew I had to advance my search so since I knew Luther was part of the Reformation I added that to the search. From this point on I also limited my search to books. I found ten titles. I looked up two of these titles but from the pictures of the books and the locations being Northern State College and Augustana College I began to realize that the two books and the rest of the list were probably too advanced for 4^thand 5^th grade reading level. I went back to the search and clicked on juvenile. Again a list of 10 books! I was so glad to see the pictures of the covers. I found one book Spy for theNight Riders that might be good for this age level. It was available at Sioux land Libraries. I saw another book, Martin Luther by Fosdick that is available at the Mitchell Public Library and the last book, Martin Luther, a Man who Changed the World only had 26 pages and was described as a biography. For a Sunday school class it might be a good book to use pictures along with some of the biographical information that is in the book. The book was available at the Brookings Public Library. I would recommend the last two books because if the Sunday School teacher would call either of those libraries and ask for the books she should be able to get them within a week and the age level seemed appropriate.

Out of curiosity I went online to check my own Dakota Christian School Library. We have five books in our elementary library and three books in our high school library about Martin Luther. I would gladly lend these to the Sunday School teacher.

#2 Graphic Novels

I did a search and started out with graphic novels and then advanced the search by adding the word classics. 775 items resulted in the search.

Our school library does not have graphic novels. I am really considering this. I found three classic graphic novels that looked appealing to me. Kidnappedpublished by Hauppauge, Tom Sawyer published by Sterling, and Mark Twain by Eureka Productions. My question would be if it is better to get a series from one publisher or do a variety of selections from different publishers.

#3 Vocal score of My Fair Lady

I typed in My Fair Lady and also designated title phrase in the search. Then I clicked on the section of type and clicked on musical score. There were 274 results in English. I clicked on the third entry but then looked and found a better selection, (Number 6) that was entitled “My Fair Lady, Vocal Selection”however, there were no copies available at any of the SD Libraries. So I checked out more of the entries and finally went back to the third entry when I was sure that it had vocal scores included. This selection is available at Northern State University and University of South Dakota. The accession number is 26429906.

A little knowledge of music is valuable when you look at the descriptions to make sure you are getting vocal scores or just piano music.

Lesson 6 -- EBooks on EbscoHost (formerly NetLibrary)

I decided to do a search on South Dakota.  I narrowed the search to South Dakota History and found 5 results.  I looked at the book,  Bachelor Bess The Homesteading Letters.  My great grandparents moved to South Dakota in the late 1890’s.  I think this book and others that I see would help me realize what life was like during that time.  Another book is After the West was Won by Paula Nelson which describes a period in South Dakota from 1900-1917.  As I reviewed my researching I realized that topic of South Dakota can be broken down into different categories and the categories can also be broken down.

I did a search for fairy tales.  There was a list of the following books with colors:  The Violet Fairy Book, The Blue Fairy Book, The Blue Book, The Yellow Fairy Book and the Red Fairy Book.  Each of these were written by Andrew Lang.  It was great to see the actual cover of the book and the colors. It appears you could find quite a few old fairy tales to read in these books!  No wonder the grandmother described in the search could recall these books. 

The only negative thing about the EBooks is that I find I have to zoom in on the pages and make the print bigger.  If I don’t, the small print seems I strain my eyes.

 

 

 

Lesson 5 -- Gale Virtual Reference Library

The GVRL is a bit more difficult for me to use.   I typed in spring festival in the main search and found 444 results.  I scrolled through those results and clicked on India, Scotland and Welsh.  You can find the festivals because they are high- lighted but you don’t always know if they happen in the spring without reading through a lot of information .  I liked the arrangement of the information about the Welsh festivals  the best in the Jr. Worldmark Encyclopedia because it listed six major holidays with the dates. 

When I searched for the festival foods I went to the Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World, 2012.  There were 270 results for spring festival foods and 648 results for festival food.  At the bottom of the table of contests countries are listed or you can go to the right side and choose a country.  When you click on that you can find many recipes for festival foods.  I was a bit disappointed that there were no recipes from the Netherlands because I am Dutch.

I could not find anything specifically under a search of spring festival games but in looking for the festivals I thoughts I had seen some games. 

I spent some more time and found somewhere a whole list of festivals listed of the world in chronological order but it was only a list and you would not click on the festival itself.  That would have been great for this assignment!

#2  I looked up several topics.  Childhood obesity had no results for 2012 listings but then I checked the year 2011 and there were 16 articles.  I thought that was a hot topic so maybe it takes some time to put the new topics in the system.  My husband has been studying a bit about the world food supply.  I could not find anything under world food supply but found 2 results for 2012 under just food supply. Food allergies were my last search.  Again I could find nothing for 2012 but there were 49 results when you limited the year to 2011.  I would imagine that these topics would have more current information soon?

   

 

 

Lesson 4 Proquest

#1  The novel Les Miserables

I typed in Les Miserables and a pop up underneath the search bar showed several things so I clicked on “Les Miserables novel” since the patron was not interested in the movie or musical version.  There were 1844 entries.

Going to the right side the document type under articles revealed 921 articles about Les Miserables.  The subject limiters resulted in 147 results under literary criticism.  I went to two of these articles.  A simple scrolling of the article first reveals the words Les Miserables highlighted in yellow.  So a simple scrolling of the article first and searching for the high lighted words would give you an idea of how many references of your subject was in the article. 

#2  Hurricane Sandy’s impact on Libraries

I went to advanced search and typed in Hurricane Sandy. In the next box I typed libraries.

I looked at the one article that resulted from this advanced search.   The Jan 01, 2013 copy of the Library Journal had an article “The Budget Balancing Act.” Again the highlighted words help you to scroll and find the information in the article.  According to this article the impact of Hurricane Sandy on libraries is still unknown.    

Lesson Three SIRS Discover and SIRS Issues Researcher

SIRS Discoverer

1. The third grader reading level should first be addressed.  I looked at a Lexile chart and determined that I would try to articles up to the 700 Lexile standard.  I used the advanced search and plugged in the Lexile range.

There were four articles on the solar system.  Three of the articles were not very long and so I think any of them could be acceptable.  One of the articles did not have a lot of reading but used a bar graph and had questions about the bar graph.  This would be a great visual aid for a person with reading problems.  Also an answer key was available. 

2.  I tried various means to research volcanoes.  A simple search showed 933 articles including graphics and web sites.  The advanced search actually had 705 articles.  It did not include the graphics and web sites.   Then I decided to look at the Maps of the World.  There were 21 graphics which included a variety of volcano pictures. 

 SIRS Issues Researcher

3.  I would go to the SIRS Issues Researcher and look under suicide.  There are many sources and at least six references to websites.  One reference was entitled “Teenagers, Suicide Behavior Timeline.”    This web site led to many links.  I am confident the committee would find excellent resources using the SIRS Issues Researcher. 

The web sites available when I googled suicide were endless.  However, it looked like a smorgasbord.  How do you know which web site the best site to try?  I can become over whelmed when I get too much information. Teachers do not have a lot of extra time.  The conciseness of SIRS Issues Researcher is a positive aspect.

4. There were over 1000 resources when I searched drought.  Then I looked up drought plus water restrictions.  There were 188 sources of information.  It appears that SIRS Issues Researcher would have valuable information for any discussion on drought and water restrictions . 

 

 

 

Lesson Two Learning Express

 Learning Express

#1  The first step would be to work with the child's teacher and so the teacher knows exactly what is happening with the student. 

 I would have the 4^th grade student go to the elementary school section in Learning Express and then click on the Reading Skills Improvement section.  Before he began I might make a chart to show score points with a prize if he reached an attainable goal.  I would start out with the ten 4^th Grade Reading Practice section. Since this only has nine questions per section it would be a good starting point.  After doing this section I would have him try the California 4^th Grade Reading Practice (54 questions)  and then the FCAT 4^th Grade Reading Practice.  (40 questions)

#2  I would have the high school graduate go  to the section of Job Search and Workplace Skills first.  She might want to look at the Business Writing section and  evaluate her grammar, vocab and  spelling to see if she needs any practice in those areas.  After that she should look at the items under job search, resumes and interviewing. 

#3  A person who is interesting in Nursing has a lot of resources to look at in  Learning Express.  Under Jobs and Careers he could look at the section on Nursing and Allied Health. This involves three sections. He might want to look at the Entrance Test Preparation to have an idea of all the tests on science and math that are involved in a health career.  The nursing school entrance exam is also available.

Another section is the License and Certification Test Preparation.  There are several preparation tests for nursing

Another option would be to go to the Career Guidance section where he could download or save to his center the e-book  Becoming a Nurse (240  pages) and look at the e-book Becoming a Health Care Professional.  It would be wise to look at the table of contents in each of these books.   

As far as the pharmacist information I could only find information under the License and Certification Test Preparation section under Nursing and Allied Health.   I found the Pharmacy Technician Exam to download. This is 251 pages with practice tests. 

Learning express does cover quite a few areas and age levels! 

Lesson One World Book Encyclopedias

 

World Book Kids I have been using this for the students in our lower grades. We have compared animals and they have looked at the Maps and More. The next assignment is to compare South Dakota to another state, specifically concerning population, state tree, state bird and state flowers. By looking at these items they will see other comparisons.
World Book Student Our students are participating in a Prairie Reader Contest. The next assignment will be to look up various authors in the biography section to find information about the authors on their book list.
World Book Advanced. I looked up Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I did not realize there were back in time articles or web sites about this book and Mark Twain. It would be useful for the students to use these sites and perhaps to hear a section or two read in class when discussing classics or any book that is in the E-book Center.
World Book Discover gave me a few problems. I finally set up an account thinking that would help me. I can not get the How to do Research section to come up as an article. I just get an outline. I will go back to that. I think this would be a great way to review or to learn how to do research correctly. I do not have a lot of interaction with the high school students so will have to give this resource information to the high school teachers.

My old blog

It has been a long time since I have posted anything and may want to use this setting again.

Lesson 10 Wrap Up

It is time to wrap up this course. It has been a great learning experience. The availability of so many good resources was the biggest discovery I have made. Now I feel much more comfortable in suggesting that the state library web site be used because I have taken the time to look at all the resources that are available.
I am already looking forward to our teacher in-services next fall when electronic resources will be a featured topic. We are looking forward to Jane instructing us. After the in-service I hope to discuss with each individual teacher how we can work together to utilize these resources during the school year.
I have a ring binder that contains many of the things I have printed off from these sessions. With a bit more organization it will also be a very helpful tool!
I have urged parents to get their own family state library card in our weekly announcements and will be sending a letter home in the report cards with some final instructions and encouragement for our students to use the state library web site this summer.
Thanks for making this course available. I really appreciated it!

Between lessons

I am very appreciative of this online course. It has given me the confidence that I need to tell our teachers that we need to be using more reliable electronic resources. I have given the junior high classes a lesson for using the World Book Student. I made a work sheet using the information that was in this resource on the Berlin Wall. This included a video which of course attracts the attention of even the poor students.
I did some more studying about SIRS and there are many educational helps. I have printed off quite a bit of material and am almost at the point of information overload!!!
During the last two weeks of school the students do not check out books so I am making plans that they visit the South Dakota State Library web site! I would have never done this if I had not taken this course!

Lesson 9 History & Genealogy Resources

These are resources that could get me in trouble!! I love to work on genealogies and family history but soon realize that so much time is needed. I am attending two family reunions this summer. One is the family of my great-great grandparents. So when school is over I may return to these sites again! Perhaps it is a good thing that I can only access Ancestry Library at school!
Ancestry Library
-1 I looked up my name and much to my surprise they had my birth date wrong! The year was correct but the month and day were incorrect. I searched my husband's name and he was born on the incorrect birthday they had given me!! Several years ago I traced my husband's family back to the 1600's but realized how important birthdates were because first names were often given to sons and grandsons. So I was disappointed that my birthday was incorrect!
-2 I searched for one of my grandparents and found his draft registration and printed that.
-3 Oops....I just see that I didn't do number three! I will have to return to the site at school next week.
I do believe I get emails concerning Ancestry Library but you have to pay for a subscription. I may have to do that.
Heritage Quest
This does not seem as user friendly to me as Ancestry Library. I did type two of my grandparents names and found them in census records. The frustrating thing is that some of the handwriting is so poor that is it is hard to read. I tried to use the "Search Books" but I was not successful with that part. I started paging through two books but had no clue how I was going to find what the information that I wanted. I was tempted to open my file cabinet and pull out lots of information that I have on my family history but I need to clean my house for company!! :)
Sanborn Maps
The disappointing thing about Sanborn Maps is that Platte, my hometown, was not listed and neither were any of the small towns close to Platte. The closest town was Armour but I am not very familiar with the town. I had hoped this would have allowed me to look at towns in Iowa where I grew up.
I am thinking of how these resources could be used at school. Some teachers have students make a personal history book and research family history. My children had to do that some years ago but I am not aware that our social studies teachers are requiring that informaton recently. I will have to ask.

Lesson 8 Learning Express Library

A few years ago our school received information about this resource. I did send the book marks we received home with students but I think this resource should be emphasized again. There is so much valuable information for any student who would like to take the time to use it.
#1 & 2 I took a 4th Grade Reading Test, a Middle school test and a word analogy test on the high school level. These would be great practice tests for any student! Using this resource would be so much better than playing on a computer during spare time!! The answers given later are good for making you think in a different way and for learning some new information.
#3 The ebooks look like they would be very valuable if you like to read from the computer. It was interesting at the wide range of sources that are available for students and even some items for parents. The ebooks appeared to have practical information. I opened up a Reading Comprehension Success book. There were 20 lessons. The book had 208 pages. If a student had enough self disciple to stick with these lessons, there would be a great deal of information that could help a person take tests and become prepared for a job and/or a career.
I am planning to go to our high school counselor and show her about this resource. Our students should be made aware of this resource. I feel test scores could be improved with the use of the Learning Express Library. Often a test score determines the amount of scholarship money that a student receives. We need to take advantage of this resource.

Lesson 7 ArchiveGrid and CAMIO

Archive Grid I was really looking forward to this lesson but found it hard to do it at school! Constant interruptions! :) I am not 100% sure I understand this resource. If you went to Cornell University you could read the autograph card of Sitting Bull? I have always known information about Sitting Bull but did not realize his death was the result of a Ghost Dance.

Lewis and Clark was the other topic that I researched. There were 20 entries and many of them can be found at the Montana Historical Society. There are several sources of contact information.

CAMIO
In researching Paul Revere it was interesting to see the detail on the silver items, the bowls, and teapots. It was amazing to see the items were so refined for the period of history.
The entries under Sioux were many. Clothing, pipes, drawings, dolls, and blankets make it easier to picture how these people lived.
Vincent Van Gogh was the artist that I chose. I teach art and the junior high students have been studying him. This site had 45 works listed. I attempted to make a slide show of Van Gogh's works.

I believe CAMIO could be used with many units in different areas if educators were made aware of this resource. It would be a great way to introduce units. Art teachers could show artists paintings. Social study teachers could show items that were made during certain eras. I ran short of time for this lesson but am eager to get back to it. I think CAMIO has endless opportunities if a person takes the time to explore this resource.

World Cat Part 2

The exercise using OAIster was totally surprising to me. I had to follow directions carefully to figure out what I was doing! Since my mother's name was Ada I clicked on the entry "Ada schoolhouse and congregation." I didn't know what I would find on the access link. I was totally surprised to see an old picture from 1923. The comment with the picture was "65 miles from Railroad."
I then clicked on Cattle on Western Farm. Again there was a picture with the comment, "They pay the bills."
I did some more searching and found a pamphlet. I could probably spend more time and am curious just what a person could find for historical documents. I grew up in Iowa and would like to see if I could find any old interesting documents.

Lesson 6 World Cat & More

Exercise Part 1
I have never used this resource and so am learning quite a bit about it. To start out I tried just searching for the book, The Mitten by Jan Brett. That was interesting because in the search I discovered there is a guide for using "The Mitten."
The next thing I did was practical. We have a teacher who would like to find a few extra copies of "Stone Fox" by Gardiner. I searched for this book and discovered that 11 libraries in South Dakota have this book, including the Mitchell Public Library so I will give her that information.
#2 I decided to go to the subject of the Holocaust again. I have been using this subject in the other electronic resources and wanted to see how this resource would be helpful. The subject Holocaust yielded 65,724 book results with 8125 visual results. What I also found interesting was that there is a video called Paper Clips. One of our teachers has recently showed me the book with the same title.
The first book listed was Hitler Youth. There are 3784 books world wide and the first library listed is the Alexander Mitchell Library.
#3 The call number of Hitler Youth was LC DD253.5. It is described as juvenile literature with no specific age level mentioned. The abstract gave a short summary of the book. It has an index, 176 pages, is illustrated, and contains maps. It was published in 2005 and there was a picture of the cover of the book.
I think World Cat could be very useful for a teacher researching a topic to find books and visuals for units. Perhaps the teacher could find several fiction books relating to the topic as well as nonfiction books with more detailed facts.
I do not know if I am really following directions as well as I should on this lesson!! I will try to do better on part 2!

Lesson 5 Net Library

I fell behind because of a reading contest that our school participates in and a Fine Arts Celebration. I find this Net Library very interesting as you can see all the aspects of the book from the cover to the index! I am assuming that high school students and college students would benefit the most.
#1 I looked up two things. An art class is making a mural and drawing sea creatures. I did find a couple of books that had some pictures that would have some photos. The Oceans and Adventure Guide Florida were two that I searched. It was fun to turn the pages on the computer!
I also love flowers and looked up "wild flowers." There was a book that had colored pictures on every page along with a description.
Net Library would be great for a research paper.
#2 The fitness search I got caught up with a book called Fat Flush Fitness Plan by Ann Gittleman. It was interesting and I probably could have read the whole book online. It gave some practical points on how fat is stored in our bodies and gave a plan on how to reduce and "flush" fat. What I liked most is that it recommended 20 minute baths three times a week!
I can see how this resource would be helpful if you were going to buy a nonfiction book and wanted to see if it would meet your needs. You could scan the book online first. Which brings me to a question. If you press the print button. Does it print just the page that you are viewing?
#3 I typed in Nebraska in the Publisher box when searching Western history. There were many books about the history of the Midwest. Several books dealt with the history of the Native Americans, there were books about Lewis and Clark and even a book about the orphan trains.
I can see this resource as being very helpful for research and maybe even for relaxation. I am eager to present this information to our staff and students. I may also recommend this to our daughter because her son has allergies and she might find information about that using this resource.

My Inspirations

The 3rd and 4th grades in our school were given some lessons the past few

weeks on how to use our automated system to find resources in our library.

They are quite excited about finding answers to the questions on a

worksheet and eventually going to the shelves and finding books

from the information that they see on the screen.