World Books for students

In World Book Kids, I searched for "wombat" and received one link to Australia, but it had nothing to do with wombats. Next, I tried using the "Plants and Animals" icon, then searched "wombat." I landed at the same link to Australia. Back to the "Plants and Animals" icon, then I clicked "Animals," then "Mammals" (though I'm not certain a wombat is a mammal) scrolled through the aphabetical list of animals and found . . . no wombat listing.

On to World Book Student. I entered "wombat" and got a brief but very informative article on wombats, along with a photograph. I learned how large they are, where they live, what they eat, how the three species of wombats differ from one another, and that they are marsupials whose pouch (unlike the pouches of kangaroos and oppossums) faces to the back.

From this exercise, I learned that when teaching students to research for their own pleasure, I need to teach even very young students to head into World Book Student if what they're looking for isn't coming up easily in World Book Kids. Elementary-age students often look for the bizarre and unusual. I prefer the quicker search process of entering a term in a search box to clicking through a variety of icon links. I think by fourth grade most of my students would prefer the more direct searching and detail of World Book Student, even though the vocabulary of the articles might be a stretch for them.

In World Book Advanced, I searched for Moldova and was stunned at the amount of information available, especially the links to Presidential reports on the right hand side. For my students, the maps, pictures, and flags will be most interesting, but to even a slightly older student, I think the Presidential papers links, and the Back in Time link will be extremely useful. This is the first level where I can really see that the online edition of World Book offers an advantage over the print edition.

What I happened to look at in World Book Discover was disturbing. I'm hoping it was just bad luck. The read-aloud feature would be terrific for new readers, the visually impaired, and the elderly, but it did not work on my computer. I liked the picture by the "Government" link to allow people to search using visual clues. The basic article for "government" was passable, but when I clicked the link to "Democracy" I got a page that looked like a double exposure: two pages were superimposed on each other. Clicking to close one brought me to a "Not Found" error page; closing that shut me out of the internet so I had to log all the way back in again. Most of my students would give up at this point.

Next I tried the "Republic" link off the government page. The page loaded properly, but the writing was wierdly awkward, as though it had been translated from some other language: "A republic is a form of government in many countries. In a republic, leaders are elected, or chosen, by the vote of the people. They usually serve for a certain time." Granted, it is difficult to explain complex concepts in simple terms, but I expect better than this from World Book.