differentiated iPad learning experience

80% of Monday night’s iPad class discussion was above my head. It appears that the majority of people already know their way around the iPad and are ready for more complex activities and discussions.

I ended both classes considering dropping out so as not to hold others back. However, that would undermine the educational purpose of what is supposed to be an introductory class. Especially with technology, we have to find a way to reach total neophytes . . . like me.

I realized this situation is an accurate reflection of what I expect to face as I introduce the iPads to the faculty in my building. As a librarian, I’m not worried about the people who know already know how to use slates. My challenge will be to establish equitable access; to offer encouragement and support to those who never thought about using iPads, who really don’t have much time to learn how to use them, and who are already overwhelmed with CCSS, PLC, and CFAs.

A BYOD environment demands differentiated learning. For beginners, specific, limited, reproducible steps are essential so we can learn at our own pace, practice repeatedly to get comfortable with a process, and review the process periodically until it becomes rote. But the tasks in the process also need to be open-ended to challenge experienced learners.

I recently took a class from the SD State Library that might be a possible model for an online class format:    http://sdlibrarychallenge.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-1-world-book-online-encyclopedia.html 

There is one specific topic for each lesson. Instructors introduce the topic, link to preselected sites with more detailed information, and set tasks. At the end of each lesson, students blog about their experience and how they might use it with classes.

I think this model would meet several goals for iPad introduction:

·         It offers opportunities for differentiation. I dream of a day when I understand enough about Reflector to read Jeff or Dave’s blog to see how they use it in a classroom, but I am a long way from there.

·         It is straightforward and can be used by independent learners after the class ends (like classroom teachers who will borrow the iPads from the library.) This addresses concerns about equitable access.

·         It offers a format for out-of-class learning experiences and an opportunity to experiment with effective self-paced online tech classes.

·         It is reproducible so less experienced people can review and practice at the moment they need the information next year and beyond.

·         It documents specific accomplishments and establishes the basic scaffolding for future learning. I know which sites I am comfortable enough to teach, and which I could learn if the need arose. For me, this is how progress in an unfamiliar territory begins. It is important for inexperienced learners to clearly know what they have learned. Without  stable, written verbiage about a specific topic, it’s hard for me to remember any specific thing I’ve learned.

Here’s my suggestion: If other students think this sounds like a format worth experimenting with, Adam would you be willing to write an introductory paragraph to some specific topic, provide links to more detailed information, and suggest some basic tasks as an experiment? (Maybe you have done all this and I just don’t know where to find it.)

The Civil Discourse grant is pushing teachers to videograph their classes using/doing whatever the teacher received a grant for, then post the video to the Civil Discourse blog here at edmodo. Maybe that would be a good topic to start with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

test posting

I am posting to my out-of-edmodo blog to see how it connects to our class edmodo account.

Lesson 10

My biggest discovery

I have two; favorite one first: We had one 6^th grade core doing animal reports to compare and contrast two animals. Oozing pride, I showed them the World Book Kids’ World of Animals link to bring up a chart on their animal (after showing it to the teacher to be sure this wouldn’t run roughshod over her research goals for the classes.) The specifics listed aligned beautifully with their assignment, even though neither the teacher nor I knew about the chart when she made her assignment. One student noticed that at the bottom of the left column you could click “Compare Animals” and list a second animal. This brings up the option to list a second animal and compare specifics side-by-side on the same screen. Wow! Their research was done for them, and they could proceed to taking notes and writing their papers. I had shown them World Book in part because of the MLA citations at the bottom of each article. We discovered that to see the citations we had to go back to the original articles, but the students were so motivated by having the comparison charts right in front of them that they had no problem going back to the individual articles to copy the citations. For me, there is no better student learning experience than when they can teach me! This was a win-win-win, and there is now a 6^th grade girl in Rapid City who is thinking – correctly – that she could be a pretty good school librarian!

My second great discovery is the HeritageQuest local history books. I got bit by the family history bug 30 years ago when I was living in Virginia, thinking I was the descendant of 19^th Century potato-famine immigrants, and accidentally discovered I had ancestors who settled Virginia in the late 1600s. For more than two decades, I have been looking for a great-great-great grandmother who has no last name of her own, only her married name. HeritageQuest has a variety of local histories and genealogies for the counties in which this woman lived. Her marriage record lists the names of her witnesses including one Brenda Moseley, who I think is her sister. Lo and behold, HeritageQuest has a genealogy of the Moseley family in Bedford County, Virginia. And I can bring up each page right in my kitchen, and dig in while dinner is baking in the oven. How great is that?!

As to promotion, I still like the idea of a floor-to-ceiling list of what’s at different resource sites. I’ll be working on that this summer. But the main promotion I do is to teach students the sites in front of their teachers. The students don’t yet understand how valuable it is to have reliable information, but more and more of their teachers do. I emphasize the same six or eight sites for a variety of projects. My goal is to have students automatically going to SDSL sites when they get a research assignment by the time we send them up to high school. This is working pretty well, in part because the number of Google hits for any given topic is now astronomical. And, through their use of social media, students are beginning to realize how much inaccurate information is available online.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to dive back into all these great resources. Even (no, especially) when I got stuck, as I did with CAMIO, I am helped by remembering how it feels to search when you don’t know how to get what you want, or even if what you want exists in the resource. The Challenge reacquaints me with the frustration and confusion my students feel as new researchers. That’s important.

When I teach the SDSL resources in front of our middle school classroom teachers, they are ecstatic that our students have access to so many reliable, vetted sources of information, and that the resources cover all reading levels and all topics. From our perspective as educators of South Dakota’s children, this is absolutely the best way to spend SDSL’s limited funding. I have only been a middle school librarian for four years, but even in this small slice of time, many teachers who come to the library for a research presentation are now requiring only SDSL sites. They are telling their students not to waste their time sorting through six million hits on Google or checking the reference notes on Wikipedia to figure out what is reliable. This is not the case with teachers who conduct research in their own rooms. Slowly, with the availability of the SDSL online resources, we are raising the level, the expectation, and the rigor expected of South Dakota students one teacher at a time. You are providing the resource that makes that possible. Thank you so much!

Lesson 9

AncestryLibrary 

Titanic’s Sister Ship(s): Under the New Collections tab, I went to Pictures, then to Passenger Ships and Images on the right; I entered England in the location box and used the keyword Titanic. I got 6 results and scanned for White Star line. The Majestic was too early, but the Olympic was launched the same year as the Titanic and its entry does list it as the sister ship of Titanic. There is a picture of the Olympic. The Britannic is identified as “similar to the Titanic” but not specifically identified as her sister ship. Indeed, I doubt White Star lines would want to identify any ship launched after Titanic as her “sister ship.”

Hindenburg: I don’t see a link for Newspapers and Publications nor do I see that phrase in any of the dropdown lists from the tabs across the top of the homepage, but I have a link for Newspapers, so I tried that. I entered Hindenburg in the keyword box and got 432 hits. If I slide down a bit in the left column, I now get a link to Newspapers and Publications. I clicked on that and increased my results to 436. The first few results are photocopies of card catalog entries. If one clicks into the View Image link on the first entry and then advances through the card using the prompt at the bottom of the image, a student could piece together the basic facts about the disaster, and find which pages to search in the New York Times archives for May 1937 to get the original stories.

As I search further, I realize that almost all of the pertinent results are these images of card catalog entries; the rest appear to be obituaries for people named Hindenburg. Under the Publications side, the articles include an entry for Col. Von Hindenburg prior to the disaster, and a review of a novel written after the disaster attempting to explain how it happened.

I wouldn’t really use AncestryLibrary for this kind of question. First, you can only access it in school so I only recommend it for information the student is very unlikely to find elsewhere. Secondly, why would a person go to AncestryLibrary to figure out what date to search in the NY Times archives? Finding the date of the disaster is a great reason to let the student use Wikipedia, then jump right into the NY Times archives. Moreover, the card catalog entries are so badly typed that it would make me hesitant to trust their accuracy. I would require the student to go to the Times anyway.

HertageQuest: I had instant success! I chose Search Books, then Places, then entered “Huntington, NY” and got a list of 16 results of which 8 were pertinent to the exact town I wanted. If you are patient, you can get the images of the pages in each book to come up, so I can sit in my kitchen in Rapid City and read the original town histories for cities across the US. To a local history geek, this is heaven!

Lesson 8 WorldCat and CAMIO

WorldCat I searched for keyword   martin luther NOT king  and got 153,000+ books. I scrolled down looking for familiar works and on the 4^th entry I found a book by Martin Marty. He is a renowned scholar who is a very accessible writer. Even though this work is aimed at adults, I would still request it for 4^th and 5^th graders and bring it to class to show them. I clicked on “See more details for locating this item” and found several in South Dakota. I would probably borrow from Augustana. They may not be the closest institution, but I have borrowed from them before and I know they act quickly on requests.

To find a Martin Luther book for children, I did an Advanced Search for    martin luther NOT king    and chose Juvenile from the subtype limits dropdown box at the bottom of the form. I found one by Sally Stepanek from 1986 that is owned by elementary schools and the Cedar Rapids Public Library. The cover was attractive, and although the copyright date is somewhat old, I think it will have the basic information needed for a children’s Sunday School class.

To find a graphic novel version of a classic, I did an Advanced Search for the keywords classics AND graphic novel; I chose Juvenile in the subtype limiter dropdown list. My results included several Garfields, which I wouldn’t really consider classics or graphic novels, but there were also many graphic novels of classics in the list including The Wind in the Willows, Kidnapped, and Tom Sawyer. The one I would choose for my collection is Journey to the Center of the Earth published by Barron’s. I like the cover illustration, and in this case judging a book by its cover seems like a reasonable approach.

For the third question, I did an Advanced Search for “My Fair Lady” (in quotation marks) and checked the box for Musical Scores under the Limit Results To section in the middle of the page. The Accession number is 26429906.

 

CAMIO   I am not having much luck with this search. First I chose Costume and Jewelry from the homepage, and limited it to 1800 using the time limiters on the left. I got 114 results but they were from all over the world and I could not figure out how to limit it to England, British, Victorian, or any other related terms.

Next I used the general search term Fashion, and then tried to use the time limiters. I could not figure out how to enter my own time limiters, and most of the ones available to me were outside the time period. I tried 1800 and got 16 results, but all of them were French. I tried to combine this with an Advanced Search for England, Victorian Era, Victoria, or the dates 1837-1901. Nothing got me any more specific results.

I repeated all this with the general search term Clothing, and had basically the same results, except that this time I had a few Native American results as well.

Next I tried a general search for Dress and used the limiter for 1900. I got 16 results of which 2 were identified as British. Both were actually identified as 20^th Century and were drawings done on Japanese rice paper which were muddled, muted, and unhelpful. A student could not see the details of dress to inform them in any specific way about how British people dressed in the Victorian Era.

Then I began to wonder if the search feature was malfunctioning, so I went to see if other students had better luck. The only person who had anything posted from this year was Shelley Rath, and she seemed to have the same problems that I was having. Jane Healy had replied, so I tried following Jane’s instructions, which were essentially what I had been doing anyway. I did not have any different results.

What exactly are you choosing as the time limiter? I only have the choices of 1800 or 1900. If I use Advanced Search By Date, I still don’t get pertinent results. How many useful results did you get? Can you figure out what I’m doing wrong?

Frankly, I like CAMIO and use it frequently. But if I were a new student doing the Advanced level challenge, this question would put me totally off CAMIO. It makes me feel better that I just bought some new books on costume through the ages. Another, better, place I would send students would be the printed World Book Encyclopedia. I did try searching World Book Advanced online but could not find helpful results there either.

 

Lesson 7 EBooks on EbscoHost

I never found the Visual Search box, though I looked in EBSCO Webhost, Student Research Center, Searchasaurus, and Kids Search. I did try several graphics search box options in Searchasaurus and Kids Search, and they were attractive and worked quickly, but I didn’t find what I wanted. I was looking for information on growing kitchen herbs. I would like to start some indoors now, and move them outside in a few months. I found dozens of articles on medicinal uses for herbs, but nothing on growing them came from searching “herbs,” “garden herbs,” or “growing herbs.”

While searching in Kids Search, the second hit I got for “growing herbs” was titled, “Long-term ecological and biodiversity monitoring in the western Himalaya using satellite remote sensing.” Here are the first two sentences of the abstract: “The IPCC in its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) described the Himalayan Region as data-deficient in terms of climate monitoring. This is a serious impediment to global research initiatives and thus necessitates long-term ecological monitoring (LTEM) across the Himalaya.” This is confusing to me: the colorful graphics and the designation of “Middle School and Elementary” on the homepage made me think I’d get articles suitable for middle school students. Perhaps, the sites vary by appearance only, but all tap into the same article database.

Here is a quotation from an article I got when I searched “South Dakota” in Kids Search:  “Paying farmers to quit plowing marginal, erodible lands was a strategy conceived under the Reagan administration mostly as a means of stalling overproduction.” There were some articles that would fit my students’ reading levels, but it’s too much to sort through. I can see that there are lots of good resources at EBSCO, but I’ll stick with SIRS Discoverer and the Discovering Collection for research in my building. This is too frustrating to use with students.

For the second question, I went to EBSCO Webhost and clicked until I got a search box. I entered “fairy tales” and scrolled through the results list until I came to The Violet Fairy by Andrew Lang. The copyright date seems reasonable for my grandmother to have enjoyed it, and the cover of the book is one color (though not violet.) Next I checked The Blue Fairy, also by Andrew Lang, but the cover had a picture on it. I took the question to mean that every book cover was a different color, but maybe it means each book was about a differently colored fairy. If that’s the case, I think I’ve found the correct series. I also found The Yellow Fairy and The Red Fairy, all by Andrew Lang. I searched for “Andrew Lang” to confirm I had found all the colored fairy titles, and I had.

I went back to search for the Kathy Ross books. I loved these books, and found them to be as charming and encouraging as I remembered them. I’m thrilled that we have free access to them, and now that my schools are encouraging ebook use, I think I will be better able to blend using the SDSL Online books into students’ and teachers’ minds as a reasonable option. We can barely afford a basic collection of craft books, but making crafts is a tremendous learning experience for children.

With ebooks, marketing and promoting titles is developing into our biggest challenge. If I can get people into a database, then they’ll nose around and find what they need in it plus discover things they didn’t know they wanted. I’m envisioning a floor-to-ceiling list of selected SDSL resources with some cover picture prints and pictures of what kinds of information kids can access at the site – a Chilton cover for 1996 Mustangs; some words written in Arabic, Japanese, and Italian by the Mango site; the cover for Crafts to Make in the Spring by the EBSCO site; a portrait of William Shakespeare next to the WB Student edition, etc. Does the SDSL have any promotional materials or ideas about how we can advertise the online resources?

Lesson 6 Gale Virtual Reference Library

I first tried searching for “spring festivals” under Multicultural Studies and got 20 hits, mostly about Asian cultures that celebrate the Chinese New Year. That occurs between January 21 and February 20, so I didn’t think that would be what this patron wanted. I did find some information on the Powhatan tribe, but the celebration described was distinctly 20^th-21^st Century and seemed rather generic.

Next I searched for “spring and summer” in the Religion section and got 9 hits. Neo-Paganism was by far the most interesting. On May 1, Neo-Pagans celebrate Beltane to honor spring flowerings and birth, and on the spring equinox, they celebrate Ostara. Ostara is the goddess of fertility. A variation of her name is Eostre which has been corrupted into the word “Easter.” Her symbols include the egg and hare. Once I lived with a flock of geese that laid huge green eggs underneath plants and behind fences for 10 days each spring, and that’s where I thought our custom of gathering eggs at Easter came from. Wrong again!

I also discovered that Black Elk associated the direction east with green and spring. Searching under Nations, I found that Poland has a multitude of spring celebrations centered on Easter including fairs, pysanky or painting eggs, housecleaning rituals, and decorating pussy willow branches with ribbons.

The patron is asking for “spring” celebrations, and I kept finding Easter celebrations, but the Neo-Pagan article makes me think the connection between spring and Easter is pretty strong albeit subtle. So I stayed under Nations and clicked on Easter on the left menu. That brought up specific articles including recipes from such countries as Spain, Poland, Greece, the Ukraine, and Australia. In these articles, I discovered that spring housecleaning is a multinational activity, and that spring is also a good time to whitewash your windmills.

Several countries mark the coming of spring with something like an Advent calendar. In this case, it is a cardboard cutout of a woman or an animal with seven legs, one for each week of Lent. As each week is completed, a leg is torn off the calendar, and the calendar is burned during Holy Week. In Spain, bullfighting season commences around Easter. Perhaps most curious and disturbing is a photograph I found in the Spain article of people taking part in religious parade dressed in costumes reminiscent of those made notorious in the United States by the Ku Klux Klan. Next time I’m in Ancestry, I will be looking to see if Nathan Bedford Forrest has a Spanish ancestor.

In Advanced Search, I found that GVRL has added dozens of cultural heritage books since 2011 including many on individual Native American tribes. These resources are far more detailed than anything I could keep in our library. I also found a number of business books on topics ranging from Market Behavior to Rossignol to Offshore Agricultural Production in Saudi Arabia.

Lesson 5: ProQuest

Question 1

I entered “Les Miserables” in the search box and got 6,243 results. I reentered “Les Miserables novel” in the search box and narrowed the results to 1808. By choosing the Document Type “Article” the results decreased to 906. Under Subjects I chose “Literary Criticism” and got down to 140. I checked various articles. They loaded quickly, and the search terms were highlighted. The articles were very scholarly. The reading level of the articles available on this site would be too difficult for middle schoolers, but very helpful for teachers doing continuing education coursework.

 

Question 2

First I tried searching “Hurricane Sandy AND libraries” and got 971 results. I narrowed the Document Type to Reports, and started by choosing the Subject of Damage, since some of the impact will be damage, though that is certainly not the only kind of impact. In reviewing the results, I found that libraries were being used as supply collection sites and as places to  hold press conferences. I can infer some impact from this information: communities are recognizing their library buildings as stable, easily located, versatile public centers. The library buildings are being instantly repurposed to provide shelter, aid, and information to the public. This will create lasting good will toward the libraries, and instill in the public a visceral memory of the library as something they are grateful their town has; an important place in times of need.

 

I also found articles on specific aid for libraries such as this press release from New Jersey        Representative Frank Pallone (“. . .  the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the New Jersey Council for the Humanities an Emergency Chairman's Grant of $30,000. The grant will go towards repairing New Jersey's cultural infrastructure and historic institutions . . . In addition, many humanities organizations, like libraries, served as shelters, emergency supply distribution centers and charging stations during the storm. The funding may also go to these organizations to defray hurricane-related costs.”) and this note from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Hearing: “The Louisiana Office of Facility Planning and Control (FP&C) is responsible for $1.4 billion repairs or replacements of thousands of disaster-damaged facilities including hospitals, libraries and college campuses in Louisiana.”

 

I learned about an entirely new kind of library: “The USGS has helped develop a new tool using information from stream gauges called a flood inundation map library to assist first responders and the general public in knowing what areas will be flooded and how deep those flood waters will be for a given storm based on the NWS flood forecast. Real-time flood inundation map applications run flood simulations and create maps "on the fly" during a flood, using real-time data. The maps are freely available to anyone at any time.”

 

Next I searched for “Hurricane Sandy AND impact on libraries” and got 116 results. I was interested in this article on how libraries were immediately curating information about the storm’s impact on their communities. (Not surprisingly, they are focusing on virtual content which cannot be damaged by storms.)

 

'Hurricane Sandy: Record, Remember, Rebuild' Project

Targeted News Service [Washington, D.C] 29 May 2013.

According to Jon Voss, Historypin Strategic Partnerships Director, "At Historypin, where we seek to build community around local history, we hope to contribute in some small way to Hurricane Sandy recovery by providing a place online to share photos and recollections of how things were before, during, and after the storm. We know that archives, libraries, and museums play a critical role in preserving cultural and community memory, and we're delighted that SAA is joining us in this effort . . . Historypin invites individuals, communities, and local archives to share photographs, videos, and memories, with the goal of creating a rich record of life in communities and neighborhoods affected by the storm, a space to share memories, and a place to chronicle the re-building efforts. “

The article I was most interested in pertained to Hurricane Katrina, not Sandy. It seemed to come up in my results because it contained the word “Hurricane” even though I had specified “Hurricane Sandy” in my search. Regardless, it is clear from this introductory paragraph that with a little serious forethought, libraries can be the vanguard of information and organization in  disaster response. Although the research focused on medical libraries, the roles and skills fit all kinds of librarians. The article makes me wonder if the Rapid City Public Library is included in FEMA or other local disaster preparedness plans.

Library roles in disaster response: an oral history project by the National Library of Medicine*[dagger]false

. Journal of the Medical Library Association96.4 (Oct 2008): 343-50.

Through the process of conducting the oral history, an understanding of multiple roles for libraries in disaster response emerged. The roles fit into eight categories: institutional supporters, collection managers, information disseminators, internal planners, community supporters, government partners, educators and trainers, and information community builders.

Lesson 4: SIRS Discoverer and SIRS Issues Researcher

SIRS Discoverer 

First, this is my go-to research resource for middle school students: I love it! But based on this exercise, I wouldn’t use SIRS Discoverer with lower elementary students, especially not low-readers. I found no articles on the solar system or on planets with Lexile levels below 330, which is the bottom level for a 3^rd grader. Educators are told that a child doing research should be working towards the bottom of their leisure reading range. I was able to sort articles on the results page, but Advanced Search did not return any results in less than 3 minutes from my home computer, and then the results were only for the key search term; there was nothing “Advanced” about the search.  

When I sorted by Lexile Level on the results page, it trumped the Relevancy search. One of the first hits was for an article on lungs that contained a “what if” reference to the “Planet Sklunk.” Fortunately I don’t see these problems in my library classes. We love SIRS because of the accuracy on the topics we need, the descriptors, the summaries, and the pre-made MLA citations at the bottom of each article.

I would use World Book Kids with lower readers. The page layout at SIRS Discoverer has too many links; too much information; too many options for a young researcher to sort through on their own. A grown-up sitting behind the keyboard could find what the student needs, but I don’t think an elementary student would stick with it long enough to get decent results.

I was disappointed to find 10- and even 20-year-old results on a topic like the solar system. SIRS needs to clean out inaccurate and outdated material. Both of these articles had information that has changed since they were published. Students don’t know inaccurate information when they stumble on it. It’s another reason I would go with World Book Kids in this situation.

I the end, I found no articles I would consider worthwhile for this student. They were too specific, or too high a reading level, or no longer accurate.

 

2.  I tried Advanced Search for Volcanoes AND maps but got nothing that made sense.

Because Advanced Search still wasn’t performing well, I searched Volcanoes as a keyword and got 141 graphics hits. Clicking on the Graphics tab brought up only the graphic images, and I could see several maps on each of the 25 pages. I like that feature for helping students quickly find a usable image for their assignment. I tried a variety of other things, but never did find a way to only look for maps.

 

SIRS Issues Researcher

Let me  start by saying I was surprised at your introductory remarks about this resource. I question the description of SIRS Issues Researcher as being the middle- to high-school version of Discoverer. It really does an entirely different thing, and if students want a single-topic-oriented search experience like they get at Discoverer, they are going to be frustrated with Issues Researcher. You can get to the articles, but this site is really about pro/con, compare-and-contrast research. I send students to the Discovering Collection from Gale to continue single-topic-oriented research. I really think it is a more accurate example of the next-step-higher research site from SIRS Discoverer.

To answer question 1., I simply searched Suicide Prevention in the homepage search box of Issues Researcher and got hundreds of articles including both general information on teen suicide, but also things on specific prevention programs and strategies. Because the articles are vetted, it is a far faster way of searching for reliable information than is Google. I have used a similar “race” when I introduce research for classes but I don’t really need to do it anymore after the middle of 7^th grade. They pretty much know if they’re in the library they have to use reliable sites and Google is too slow.

 

2. I searched Water Use to start, and got a variety of hits about issues around the globe. I especially liked the Subject links at the bottom of each article for ideas about more specific search terms. Here is the list from an article about water use in Colorado:

Subjects:  Arid regions, Conservation of natural resources, Environmental impact analysis, Environmentalism, Irrigation, Irrigation farming, Natural resources, Reservoirs, Water conservation, Water use, Water-supply, West (U.S.), Colorado River Watershed (Colo.-Mexico), Irrigation water

There were many articles about towns all around the planet which were facing water conservation needs, and the solutions they were coming up with. I think these positive perspectives on water use might be very helpful at a town meeting where tempers can become heated. To be able to say, “Lots of people around the world are facing similar problems. Here’s what they’re trying” and give some accurate examples could move the discussion in a productive way.

Lesson 3 Learning Express

I found Learning Express to be more cumbersome to navigate and less helpful than I remembered it from a few years ago.

My main concern is about privacy: I don't like having to register, sign in, or have my movements tracked by any site, but this is especially concerning for people who might be exploring new job options. I emailed Learning Express to ask if there was a way to use their site without registering. If I hear back, I will add it to the bottom of this post. For this lesson, I created a fake ID and was able to register without giving an email address.

Still, I think as librarians we need to be aware of privacy issues. If a user wants to create an account that's one thing, but to require an account to access the site content I think is unnecessary and unfair. I don't know if this is something SDSL discusses when they contract with a site to offer it through the state library, but I think it should be going forward. I don't see any reassurances on the Learning Express site that they won't be using or releasing information they have collected from users.

1. For the 4th grader, I found Reading Comprehension exercises available for 5 different kinds of reading: Informational, Narrative, Persuasive, Poetry, and General Reading. I will be showing this to the Reading Specialist in our building.

2. For the woman seeking an office manager job, I first went to the Career Center and searched "office manager" but got no hits. Then I noticed the left and right arrowheads in the middle of the page and moved through options to Job Search and Workplace Skills and chose Build Your Workplace Skills from the menu on the left. There were four lessons on writing skills available, but nothing on what I think of as "management" skills: organizational skills, motivating and directing workers, basic accounting, corporate flow charts and position expectations, basic legal issues in Human Resources (taxes, insurance and benefits, harassment, etc.) I searched these topics individually without much success. 

Next I went to Prepare for an Occupation Exam and searched for "business", "office manager", "clerical", "administrative", and "human resources." No hits for any of these. I guess the only thing Learning Express can offer at this time is the writing lessons.

I will be checking other people's blogs on this question to see what else they find. "Office manager" is a pretty basic, common request and I hope there is more on Learning Express than I was able to find.

3. For the student interested in nursing or pharmacy, I went to the Career Center and chose Allied Health first. In one of the articles, there was a brief definition of what a pharmacist does, but not much else. Under the Occupational Exams center I found some tests for Pharmacy Technician Certification, but that is not the same thing as a pharmacist.

Back at the Career Center, I found a section on Becoming a Nurse, but I could not access it and the site froze three times in a row when I tried to open the document.

Here again, I am hoping others had better luck. When I used the site a few years ago, I thought it was a gold mine.

I also explored the College Prep Center and went into the AP exams. There are a number of curious 8th graders who would enjoy trying their hand at these tests, so I will be showing these to students soon. To see the exams, I did have to register, but the tests loaded smoothly and offered several different ways to take them and to use them as study aids.

Lesson 2

I decided to time myself on this lesson. Even signing in from home, the whole thing took 7 minutes. I love that South Dakotans have so much information at their fingertips.

Chilton
1. I entered the year, make, and model at the home page and clicked "Enter." Next I chose Steering Wheel Removal and Installation on the left menu. There were three videos available, and I played the third, which sounded most pertinent. It loaded quickly, the video quality was excellent, camera angles were helpful, and I especially appreciated the voiceover. It was not automated; there was no accent; and the script was in short clear sentences.

2. I had a little trouble with this one because I don't now anything about transmissions. However, I have used Chilton with several students this year, and they always know what options to choose for what they want. I just let them know the site exists and get them into the right year, make, and model. I think the Transmission Identification number is A131L. That's the number related to the Geo Prizm 3 speed transaxle . . . whatever that is. I have no question that if I had a living patron asking for this information we could work together to find it.

I am so glad that Chilton has gone online. It saves a ton of paper, shelf space, and continuous update costs, but mostly it gives me a site I can introduce to students that some non-readers will absolutely love. Plus the videos give a much clearer explanation of which bolt to tighten than a schematic drawing ever could. Thanks for offering this site!

Mango
I clicked "Start Learning", chose "English Courses", then hovered over each language offering to see which one was Vietnamese. I clicked into the one beginning "Tieng Anh Cho" and was on my way.

What a great resource! I hope you are in contact with agencies and congregations that are resettling immigrants and refugees to let them know about this resource. What an asset!

Lesson 1C

I used the French edition, and searched for "house." The response was quick, but I was surprised by how many items pertained to the United States. I had expected the articles to emphasize houses in France and French speaking countries. I did not get the article on Maisons that focused on houses; rather I got articles on Hull House, Halifax, and Jane Addams. The sidebar information was cognates and unremarkable. I noticed when I hovered over certain terms like "suivant" an English definition popped up. Students would like that.

Next I browsed "Peuple" and scrolled down to find "Maison." For results, I got three pages of articles ranging from terrariums to lamps to pets to vacuum cleaners. There was also a wonderfully complete article on houses, and once I found the Translate button I was able to learn a lot.

I encourage my students to explore and just have fun in the French and Spanish editions. They rarely have enough free time or patience to do this, but on the occasions when I have required them to do it for 10 minutes, they laugh a lot and enjoy it. Sadly, there is very little opportunity for this kind of playtime in a middle school day.

Lesson 1B.1  WB Online Info Finder Kids

I went to Games, hoping I might find something for SPED student in my middle school. The Spelling Maze was too graphically immature for my students. The words were challenging enough for some SPED classes, but the only movement comes from using the arrow keys, and that is too simple for any students in  my level. The line drawings were neither clever nor engaging.

The second game I tried was multicolored multipliers. As you solved a multiplication fast fact, numbered sections on a simple line drawing would get colored in. It would hold a child's interest for a while, and it does reinforce basic multiplication facts, but I am a real believer in using technology when it is the best way to teach, not just because it is available. In this case, I would far rather have the child select the colors they wanted and get the much-needed small muscle skill of coloring the sections themselves. The picture would look better, the child would be more engaged and proud of their own efforts. Having incorporated more kinetic activity, the exercise would be more deeply embedded in the child's memory.

The last game I tried was a kind of  Social Studies tic-tac-toe. The questions were challenging; I liked playing against an unknown opponent, and the game was entertaining enough to be fun. I would recommend this to 7th grade Social Studies teachers in need of a fill-activity while they reteach lessons for struggling students.

Lesson 1B.2   WB Online Info Finder grades 5-9

I may have the title of this WB site incorrect. To my mind, there are so many WB sites it is very confusing. I have the same problem when I teach WB Online, and so do my students and teachers. I wish their names for the Public Library sections and the basic reference sections were radically different from each other.

I went to the virtual tour titled, "WB Explores the Pilgrims and Colonial Life." It loaded quickly and looked promising. The Q&A format was clear, but the time- and location-jumping between the questioner and the costumed responder seemed contrived. I would have preferred to see a 21st Century child speak their question directly to the re-enactor. It got even more confusing when a 21st Century historian joined the re-enactor in the video frame to try to re-answer the child's question. Then the historian explained in a slightly patronizing way that the term "Pilgrim" is never applied to these people, and that they never called themselves that nor thought of themselves as pilgrims. The questioner was using exactly the same terminology used by WB. If that's the case, why doesn't WB use proper terminology in its title for this tour?

I reviewed a few other questions. The re-enactor responder uses the same opening in each video clip, which would seem pretty fakey to kids. The language the re-enactor uses to answer the child's question is far too complex and mature for the age of the questioner. When the 21st Century historian steps into the video frame to clear it all up, she uses equally lofty language.

The last question I tried was "Did Native Americans marry?" I think the question rightly should be, "Did Wampanoags in the 1600s marry?" as variations likely existed between tribes and across the centuries of Native American life in North America. The re-enactor presents what seems to me like a late-19th Century notion of love and "wanting to spend the rest of their lives together" as the reason Wampanoags married. Were there no economic or political incentives in selecting mates? Did the young people choose their own partners without advice or interference from their elders? I did appreciate the explanation of a give-away.

Lesson 1B.3     WB Online Reference Center

I researched Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Under Related Information, the Primary Sources left me totally confused. I could not figure out how they related to Huck Finn, and there were no narrative introductions that I could find to help make the connections. This would not be something I could send 8th graders to and have them get anything out of it. The Back in Time articles had the same problem. They may have made glancing reference to Mark Twain or Huck Finn, but for students at my level, it would have been wasted time and effort to read through all this morass.

Of the six websites, the first one could not be found. The second and third went to the same site, but the material there was high quality, varied, and original. Sites 4 and 6 gave information on Twain works too loosely related to Huck Finn to be of use to middle schoolers. But site 5 on Tom Sawyer was very interesting and pertinent to understanding both Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn.

On the whole, this side of the WB Online offerings leave me cold.

Lesson 1a World Book Kids

I went to World of Animals and, lo and behold! there was a picture of an animal I actually know something about: the axolotl. I know of this Mexican salamander through a young microbiologist at the University of Minnesota. She is in a lab that is researching the axolotl's amazing ability to heal injuries with virtually no scar tissue. In fact, the axolotl's regenerative capacity is such that if you remove the poor thing's entire liver, it will keep itself alive while it grows a new liver. If we were to learn the secret of the axolotl's regenerative capacity, it seems that humans might truly be able to live forever, replacing each organ system with a new set as needed.

Setting that disturbing philosophical possibility aside, let's look at the information offered in World Book Kids. The picture is of an albino axolotl, but the article describes a normally colored axolotl. This is confusing. It's a great opportunity to mention albinos and what the term means, but they never do that. In fact, because axolotls are being so assiduously studied and it is easier to breed albino axolotls for studies, I believe there are more albino axolotls that normally colored axolotls on earth at any given moment. Surely this should be mentioned by World Book Kids.

I loved the "Exhibit" feature and will definitely show this to 6th grade classes doing animal research projects. The facts are clear, organized, and interesting (like that they share gender names with pigs: "boar" and "sow". How did that happen?) The article was mediocre at best. It didn't clear up the albino issue. It said they are popular pets but never explained why anyone would want to keep such an unattractive and apparently dull animal as a pet. What is it about axolotls that makes people want to domesticate them? Their importance in research was not mentioned nor, more importantly, was the regenerative capacity of salamanders in general.

I was surprised that the read-aloud feature was not very helpful. It is an automated voice which pronounces "axolotl" in awkward and inconsistent ways. Worse, if you press the "Hear text read aloud" link it reads every language it could read aloud in, and all the instructions. Students in the target age of "WB Kids" won't sit through for all this nonsense. More troubling, I can't find a way to stop Ms. Robotic Siri. As I write, she is dedicatedly reading the copyright and trademark information at the bottom of the page. I have clicked everywhere I can think of and cannot get her to stop.

When I logged in at South Middle School in Rapid City, the citations were not consistently organized: the APA and Harvard citations were spaced out vertically with one item per line. When I logged in at my house, the citations were lined up correctly. That seems odd.

But the bigger question is this: Why is Harvard citation formatting included in a resource aimed at K-5 in the first place? Are there elementary schools anywhere in the world that require Harvard citation formatting for elementary students? Here in Rapid City, we're being told if you can get middle school students to understand the legal requirements for citation, and to put the citation in MLA format, that's more than half the battle. Why can't those Massachusetts snoots just accept the MLA format? It' s got everything their format has except for the URLs which are impossibly long for students of World Book Kids age to transcribe anyway.

Nitpicking aside, I will definitely use the exhibit feature of this resource for 6th grade animal reports. The chart will make their work much easier and the MLA citation that they can just copy and paste to their bibliographies is icing on the cake.