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.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
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.
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.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
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.
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.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Lesson 10
CAMIO would have to be my biggest discovery. I try to integrate art into the elementary school world in many ways, and this is going to be a wonderful resource for me.
I've mentioned lots of specific ways I'll be integrating these resources into my school in earlier posts. Now that I have a sense of all the options available, there are 3 general things I hope to do next year: 1. Ask for 10 minutes at monthly faculty meetings for the first few months of the year and demonstrate just one site per month for the teachers. 2. Ask for 20-30 minutes at a PTA meeting to show parents a few of the sites (World Book, the testing site, and whatever othersthey're interested in.) This will also encourage them to get library cards so they can access the sites at home. 3. Put log-in instructions in the school newsletter in hopes parents will explore on their own.
This has been a great course. Thanks for offering it! I especially appreciated the ability to do it on my own uneven time schedule!
I've mentioned lots of specific ways I'll be integrating these resources into my school in earlier posts. Now that I have a sense of all the options available, there are 3 general things I hope to do next year: 1. Ask for 10 minutes at monthly faculty meetings for the first few months of the year and demonstrate just one site per month for the teachers. 2. Ask for 20-30 minutes at a PTA meeting to show parents a few of the sites (World Book, the testing site, and whatever othersthey're interested in.) This will also encourage them to get library cards so they can access the sites at home. 3. Put log-in instructions in the school newsletter in hopes parents will explore on their own.
This has been a great course. Thanks for offering it! I especially appreciated the ability to do it on my own uneven time schedule!
Lesson 9
I searched for my exact name and birth year and, being a privacy bug, I am relieved to say I got 9 hits and none of them were about me. Even looking for voter and census data, I got no hits.
Searching for my grandparents, I found better results if I left off years from the search. I ran through a number of searches with no results, even though I know they filled out census forms and voted. When I left off either years or state names, I was able to come up with some good results.
Strangely, I routinely get good results when I search for people in the 18th and 19th centuries. Perhaps because there are not as many records to search through. It is interesting to me that I can get marriage records for an ancestor from 1804 more readily than I can for one from 1920.
Keyword searching South Dakota under the Photos and Maps tab brought up 5 categories of photograph collections (including 3,000+ high school yearbooks!) and 4 categories comprising 150 maps. To actually view a map, I need to install an Ancestry Viewer, which I am not permitted to do on my school computer, but even so, this is another great resource!
Searching for my grandparents, I found better results if I left off years from the search. I ran through a number of searches with no results, even though I know they filled out census forms and voted. When I left off either years or state names, I was able to come up with some good results.
Strangely, I routinely get good results when I search for people in the 18th and 19th centuries. Perhaps because there are not as many records to search through. It is interesting to me that I can get marriage records for an ancestor from 1804 more readily than I can for one from 1920.
Keyword searching South Dakota under the Photos and Maps tab brought up 5 categories of photograph collections (including 3,000+ high school yearbooks!) and 4 categories comprising 150 maps. To actually view a map, I need to install an Ancestry Viewer, which I am not permitted to do on my school computer, but even so, this is another great resource!
Lesson 7
I learned that the Cornell University Library apparently has a card signed by Sitting Bull in an envelope. I was also reminded of the highlights of Sitting Bull's life, and I noticed that there may be an alternative way to spell "Hunkpapa." If I were researching, I'd have gotten a lot of ideas for additional research topics including the Ghost Dance, Sitting Bull in Canada, and Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. I'd like to know how Cornell got the autograph card, but I think that would take a different kind of research.
Next I searched Sally Hemings. I got 19 hits, all of which looked entirely pertinent. The documents are primarily at University of Virginia, but also Howard University, Smith Library of Regional History, and UCLA. The descriptions are very objective, and one yearns to read the full texts. Maybe in a few years this will be possible. Meanwhile, a researcher could go far with what is given in the current format: additional topics to research; the ability to construct timelines of people's lives and whereabouts; their personal financial ups and downs, schools attended, friends and business associates, other family members, etc. This resource would be invaluable in planning research trips to be sure one ends up at the right library for the holdings one wishes to access. It eliminates a lot of "hit or miss" searching. I'm not sure if many documents will be available for copying or borrowing, but the site does give information on who to contact to find out about copying options.
I love CAMIO! What a resource! Many pictures of Revere's silver work came up. The National Endowment for the Humanities sent our school a set of posters that include the Paul Revere portrait and the Grant Woods painting, and a few pictures of his silverwork. Students really connect to his work and are excited to know he did something besides ride his horse on April 18, 1775. I've been asked for more examples of his silverwork, and now I'll be able to show them some.
I was struck in the Sioux search by the variety both of the works held and the museums holding them: shirts, pipes, drawings, dolls, and parfleches held by leading museums from Boston to Quebec to San Francisco. I will be making a point of showing this search to my students during Native American month next year. Native and non-Native students alike do not seem to realize how unique it is to live amid Sioux culture. What an ego-boost for young Native American students to see that their culture's artwork is prized and collected all across our continent.
I searched for the work of a girl from my Brownie troop, Cindy Sherman. I got 6 hits, and was relieved to see they were all "school-room appropriate." Still, I would pre-search artwork before showing the site to students as I work in a fairly conservative community with younger students.
This is a great resource to expand rural children's exposure to artwork, and to enrich curriculum with art. I could send links to Mondrian for teachers doing squares and rectangles; Rousseau for jungle studies, etc. The possibilities are endless.
For the last question, I searched Georgia O'Keeffe first, and was disappointed to get only one hit. That's not enough to trigger the slide show, so I searched Renoir instead. The slide show feature would allow teachers to open up the image on their Promethean boards, then open a clear screen over it, then use their stylus to draw and mark all over the painting to show features, highlight perspective, discuss use of line or color or brush technique, and on and on. Plus setting up the slideshow ahead of time makes lesson planning a snap. I can't wait to start using this in my lessons next year.
Next I searched Sally Hemings. I got 19 hits, all of which looked entirely pertinent. The documents are primarily at University of Virginia, but also Howard University, Smith Library of Regional History, and UCLA. The descriptions are very objective, and one yearns to read the full texts. Maybe in a few years this will be possible. Meanwhile, a researcher could go far with what is given in the current format: additional topics to research; the ability to construct timelines of people's lives and whereabouts; their personal financial ups and downs, schools attended, friends and business associates, other family members, etc. This resource would be invaluable in planning research trips to be sure one ends up at the right library for the holdings one wishes to access. It eliminates a lot of "hit or miss" searching. I'm not sure if many documents will be available for copying or borrowing, but the site does give information on who to contact to find out about copying options.
I love CAMIO! What a resource! Many pictures of Revere's silver work came up. The National Endowment for the Humanities sent our school a set of posters that include the Paul Revere portrait and the Grant Woods painting, and a few pictures of his silverwork. Students really connect to his work and are excited to know he did something besides ride his horse on April 18, 1775. I've been asked for more examples of his silverwork, and now I'll be able to show them some.
I was struck in the Sioux search by the variety both of the works held and the museums holding them: shirts, pipes, drawings, dolls, and parfleches held by leading museums from Boston to Quebec to San Francisco. I will be making a point of showing this search to my students during Native American month next year. Native and non-Native students alike do not seem to realize how unique it is to live amid Sioux culture. What an ego-boost for young Native American students to see that their culture's artwork is prized and collected all across our continent.
I searched for the work of a girl from my Brownie troop, Cindy Sherman. I got 6 hits, and was relieved to see they were all "school-room appropriate." Still, I would pre-search artwork before showing the site to students as I work in a fairly conservative community with younger students.
This is a great resource to expand rural children's exposure to artwork, and to enrich curriculum with art. I could send links to Mondrian for teachers doing squares and rectangles; Rousseau for jungle studies, etc. The possibilities are endless.
For the last question, I searched Georgia O'Keeffe first, and was disappointed to get only one hit. That's not enough to trigger the slide show, so I searched Renoir instead. The slide show feature would allow teachers to open up the image on their Promethean boards, then open a clear screen over it, then use their stylus to draw and mark all over the painting to show features, highlight perspective, discuss use of line or color or brush technique, and on and on. Plus setting up the slideshow ahead of time makes lesson planning a snap. I can't wait to start using this in my lessons next year.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Lesson 9
I will have to report on AncestryLibrary later since I do not have access at this time.
I went to HeritageQuest various locations in Iowa, Nebraska, and Virginia. Some hit; some did not. Putting in more information was not helpful. I was disappointed that all my searches led only to bibliographic information and a form to request the article. "Places" was not a very rewarding tool for browsing. However, I had much better luck exploring "People." Many imporant and obscure books are available in full text; individual's names are searchable, and the pages where hits occur are clearly indicated. Here again, less information in the search box got me more accurate hits.
On Sanborn Maps of Custer for 1910 I found the Kleemann House on the corner of 6th and Custer St. (now Mt. Rushmore Rd.) and two banks still in use. The maps were clear and I appreciated the various sizes available. Clearly these maps come from a fire insurance company: piles of lumber are noted all around Custer!
I went to HeritageQuest various locations in Iowa, Nebraska, and Virginia. Some hit; some did not. Putting in more information was not helpful. I was disappointed that all my searches led only to bibliographic information and a form to request the article. "Places" was not a very rewarding tool for browsing. However, I had much better luck exploring "People." Many imporant and obscure books are available in full text; individual's names are searchable, and the pages where hits occur are clearly indicated. Here again, less information in the search box got me more accurate hits.
On Sanborn Maps of Custer for 1910 I found the Kleemann House on the corner of 6th and Custer St. (now Mt. Rushmore Rd.) and two banks still in use. The maps were clear and I appreciated the various sizes available. Clearly these maps come from a fire insurance company: piles of lumber are noted all around Custer!
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