Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Week 10 Wrap Up

Week 10 Wrap Up

1.  My biggest discovery during this project was how many resources are available for me to use in my classroom.  The amount of resources available online is amazing.  I was a little worried about how many I would be able to use in my Physical Science class.  However, after completing the assignments I noticed that I could use about 85% of the resources to meet the Core Standards.  The part of the assignment that I enjoyed the most was being able to complete it with my two sons.  Working with them and seeing how many resources are available for them to use free of charge is outstanding.

2.  I will promote all of these resources throughout my entire school district.  Startng with our science department at the high school and then communicating with all of the staff at the elementary and middle school.  I will also speak to other parents about this great opportunity to teach their kids.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

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.  When I searched my name it was pretty interesting what came up...my birthdate and location and my marriage certificate.  However, other than that, it was the only piece of information that originally came up that I recognized.

2.  I searched for my grandfather and noticed there were alot of people with the same first and last name.  Finding him was a little more difficult, but after refining my search, I was able to locate him.  I thought it was a pretty neat experience.

3.  Maybe I did not understand this one...I typed in South Dakota in the location bar and clicked search.  All I was able to locate was information about a Mr. or Mrs. B, D, F and so on.  I could not click on any pictures.

4.  For this one, I again looked up information about my grandfather.  I was very interested in finding information that pertained to him fighting in the Korean War.  I was amazed to find 5 different items that listed him as being there and fighting in that war.  This was a very cool search and I was able to find out information about him that I can share with my children.

5.  This is a very cool feature.  There were many buildings I could locate that are still being used today in Belle Fourche, SD

Common Core

There are a varity of standards that all these sites could use...

Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text

says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas,

concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective

selection, organization, and analysis of content.

a. Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information to

make important connections and distinctions; include formatting (e.g.,

headings), graphics (e.g., figures, tables), and multimedia when useful to

aiding comprehension.

b. Develop the topic with well-chosen, relevant, and sufficient facts, extended

definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples

appropriate to the audience’s knowledge of the topic.

c. Use appropriate and varied transitions to link the major sections of the text,

create cohesion, and clarify the relationships among complex ideas and

concepts.

d. Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to manage the

complexity of the topic.

e. Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to

the norms and conventions of the discipline in which they are writing.

f. Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports

the information or explanation presented

Lesson 8 ArchiveGrid and CAMIO

Lesson 8 ArchiveGrid and CAMIO

1.  I learned that Sitting Bull, also known as Tatanka Iyotake or Tatanka Iyotanka or Ta-Tanka I-Yotan, was a Native American shaman and leader of the Hunpapa Sioux. He fought against the Crow Indians and was wounded in battle on several occasions. Sitting Bull greatly opposed the encroachment of the white men. He led Sioux and Cheyenne warriors against U.S. soldiers of the 7th Cavalry at the battle of Little Bighorn. After the battle, in which many were killed, Sitting Bull led his tribe into Canada, where they lived until surrendering to U.S. forces. After his capture he toured with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Sitting Bull was killed while resisting arrest for his unwillingness to abandon the traditions of the ritual Ghost Dance, which had been outlawed.

2.  I performed a search about efficiency because it is what we are currently studying in Physical Science, which is the subject I teach at the high school.  There were 2133 various articles about efficiency, which I could get from Universities our of California or all the way to the University of Virginia.  Pretty overwhelming.

CAMIO

1.    I see various items from Paul Revere.  I looked at prints, spoons, and tea sets.

2. After typing in Sioux, I noticed all kinds of items created by the Sioux Indian Tribe

3. My favorite artist is Thomas Kinkade.  I could not find anything about him.  It looks like a limitation of the site is artists of the modern era.

4. I will be honest I really don't know how I or the community would use this resource.  The only time I could see using this is when presenting a concept or a research paper, I could show some of these as visuals with my research.
Common Core:

I am sorry, but I don't feel this site would help me in teaching physical science or presenting information about physical science. 

Friday, March 8, 2013

Lesson 7 WorldCat

Lesson 7 WorldCat

1.  When clicking on the drop down menu I noticed there are many of different ways you can search for a   title.  This would come in handy for a librarian because they would not need to get out of one program and get into another.  It is conveniently located in one spot.

2.  Again, I chose to complete this question with my 11 year (5th grade) son.  Again, we chose to look up books about fishing.  We found the perfect one...The young fishing enthusiast.  There were 909 libraries worldwide that had this book.  The #1 library was Alexander Mitchell Library.

3.  There must be something wrong with the links to all the South Dakota libraries because all the links that I clicked on said "Error".  I finally chose Bettendorf Public Library in Iowa.  The call number is J799.1 BA.  When I clicked on the Author of the title, the next page not only showed me 5 other titles written by the same author, but various other authors with a similar name.  When I clicked on the subject, I was very impressed with how many other books with the same topic came up for me to choose from.

Common Core:

When I went to the advanced tab and put in the information I was impressed with not only the amount of titles to select from, but when I found one of interest, I was equally impressed with how many libraries owned a copy.  This site is excellent!  I would feel very comfortable using this site to help my 9th grade science students find information about any topic they are researching.  The best part is that my students would not have any excuse for not being able to check out a title that would help them with any research they are doing for any subject, not just my science class.  As far as a common core standard, when a student uses this site they would meet any of the state standards for reading.

Lesson 6 Ebooks

Lesson 6 Ebooks

1.  I chose to complete this assignment with my 11 year old son.  We chose various non-fiction titles from fishing to football.  Some of the subjects had an extensive selection while others were limited to only one book.  There were even some that did not cover the subject at all.  As far as a resource I think there needs to be more work done here.  This is one tool that I think can be used a ton, but when we couldn't find any information on a subject we became frustrated.

2.  Some appropriate titles for researching Constitution Day are Bill of Rights, Illustrated Dictionary of Constitutional Concepts, Companion to the United States Constitution and Its Amendments

3.  When I went to advanced search and looked up information on Nebraska I noticed that there was some information that pertained to Western History however, I was not impressed with the selections.  I did not think it searched for appropriate information.  After typing in Nebraska, received information about Africa...hmmmm.  I think the search engine needs to be updated.  Again, I found myself getting frustrated searching for the information I was looking for.

Common Core:

1.  Like I said above, I searched for information with my 11 year old son.  Even though we could not find information on all the subjects we were looking for, we did find plenty of information that interested him.  We clicked on 5 books of each subject area about football and basketball.  We downloaded one to read together.  After reading the book, we met every reading standard for the 5th grade.  The one that applied most was

Reading Standard 5th Grade # 7. Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently.


Friday, February 22, 2013

Lesson 5 -- Gale Virtual Reference Library

Basic Discovery Questions:

1.  For this I chose the title:  Chemical Elements:  From Carbon to Krypton, 2006.  I chose this because I wanted to see if it would be something useful to use within my classroom.  I know that there are instructors out there that can make studying the element exciting, however, there are times within our Chemistry units that studying the elements can be a little dry.  I really liked the pieces about the periodic table.  It has the ability to select any element and see electron configuration and other various types of good information.

2.  Zinc...ADHD Diet.  I really liked the listening tool.  The only flaw I saw in it was the voice was very robotic.  I can see where this tool would be extremely useful to my auditory learners and special ed. kids who are required to listen to the text in their IEP's.  I also like how it highlights the portions they are at in the text.  This would also be extremely helpful with the kids who have a hard time following along while someone is reading the information.

Common Core Connection Questions:

1.  The first article I chose to read and connect to the common core standards was Science Learning; Encyclopedia of Education.  We are taught from a very young age that science is one of the best subjects in schools to teach critical thinking skills, being able to explain concepts from a scientific basis, and argumentation.  I thought that this article would cover the standard for Reading Grades 9-12 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.

2.  The second article I actually gave to my senior advisory group and had them read it during our advisory time.  The article was titled Strategic and Long-Range Planning in Higher Education.  I thought the article was very interesting because it touched on how colleges and universities much continue to offer the most modern forms of education and facilities to ensure they do not decline in enrollment.  When I gave it to my senior group I thought it was an excellent choice to cover the standard for Reading grades 9-12 Key Ideas and Details #1.  Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.  As an advisory group we had a great discussion about how universities are currently doing this and we also went into the ones that they feel are not staying ahead of the trends.  I then asked the question if any of this was reasons they were making the choices of their college.  It led to a good discussion with them.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Lesson 4: ProQuest

I have to say that this was my least favorite of the resources thus far.  I chose to look up information on G-Forces because that is what I am currently teaching about in our Physics class.  I was pleasantly surprised about the amount of useful information within the site.  I was also very happy with the variety of different topics under the same topic.  For instance, I found an article:  Experts: New Football Helmet Technology can cut G-forces to the Brain by 50%.  This was a very interesting atricle and I even sent it to our athletic director to read.

As far as the publications portion of the assignment...I was not very impressed with this portion.  I may need to use it more to become more familar with it, but I thought it was fairly hard to use and navigate to find information.  I tried to various topics such as Gravity, Laws or Motion, G-Forces, Accleration, etc. and it alwasy came up that it could not find any...then I just put in Science and it pulled quite a few, but the span of information that it covered would take me a long time to find anything that I am covering in class.

Common Core:
Using the article I mentioned above would connect perfectly with  the common core standard:  Reading Standard for Informational Text #1:  Cite Strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicity as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Lesson 3: SIRS

Basic discovery exercise questions:

1.  I ended up teaming up with my second grade son on this portion.. We chose to look up information on hamsters.  When we put the word hamsters into the search engine we were very surprised at how much information and different topics there were to choose from.  We selected "hamsters on the wild side".  There was only one picture on this particular topic.  And there was only one reading level to choose from and that was an easy reading level.  Even though there was only one reading level to choose from this was very good information.  My son really enjoyed reading about them.  I particularly liked the citation part of the page To explain to my students where the information came from.

2.  I chose to complete this question with my fifth-grade son.  He chose to look up information and facts about Russia.  We both Really liked the overview portion of information about the country.  I really enjoyed the major events in history portion of this page because it provides an excellent opportunity to open up discussion about your country that you're talking about.  My son really enjoyed the "did you know" part it really Struck his curiosity and imagination about the country.  The maps of the world tab I don't even know where to begin because of the amount of information that was there and the amount of different maps there were to browse through and look at.  This was by far my favorite part of this assignment because it really showed me how much data there is on this particular website.  Wow!  Unfortunately I could not find the database features for this particular subject I don't know if I did anything wrong or not but I just could not find it.

SIRS Issues researcher questions:

1.  I chose to look up information on education funding.  The overview portion of this was very good I thought it was very informative.  The research tools I thought was very diverse and gave me many options to choose from.  As far as the articles part on the left-hand side of the page there were 1000+ newspaper and magazine articles to choose from on this subject.  Plus the part that I really like is that it had reference articles as well.  If I needed very good information I know that I could count on coming to this particular page and finding anything that I need.

2.  In the curriculum pathfinders portion I chose to look up information on physics.  As far as core subjects all of the important core subjects were there to choose from I just chose science and physics because that's the area in which I teach.  Again I cannot say enough about the range of topics covered and to choose from within just one subject of science.  Again I chose physics and I thought that it was very extensive with a huge amount of information that it discussed.  In the research tools on this particular subject it had newspaper articles,  magazine articles, Government documents which I really liked, It had reference articles, graphics and media which is something that would appeal to my visual learners, And then finally it had a web select sites, Which was amazing because it had about 25 pages of other websites that I could visit to get different types of information and just elaborate more on my subject.

Common Core Connections

I chose to look up information on physics.  And I hope that this answers this particular part because I actually thought that it could look up information on every single standard within science.  I was very impressed with the amount of information and the depth of that information that it covered.  My students would be able to get any amount of information from this website and I as a teacher am going to be using it within every chapter that I cover.  Awesome website!

Lesson 2

1.  This set up for the login process was very easy.
2.  When I logged into the learning express Library and went through a fourth-grade test I was very impressed with the grading portion.  It was very fast and efficient.  The part that I like the most was when I clicked on the answers part of the testing component... I really liked how much it explained which ones I got incorrect and how I could improve my skills to get it correct next time.
3.  Okay for this one I went into the business writing one portion... It was titled get organized.   The overview part was great.  It did a good job explaining the course.  I loved the pre-writing part where it had templates that you just filled in the information.  Overall I thought the course part of this was very organized and thorough.
4.  For this one I chose the job interviews that get you hired.  I thought that it was very thorough and easy to use.   I also thought that the information that was given to me was extensive and I can find pretty much anything I wanted to.

Common Core:

The area in which I teach is ninth-grade physical science.  I did not think there was a whole lot available as far as e-books and information for my content area.  I was able to find some information or an ebook on chemistry.  I thought that it would cover the common core standard 9-12.P.1.2 Where students are able to describe ways that atoms combine.  I also thought that it would cover The common core standard 9-12.P.1.3 Where students are able to predict whether reactions will speed up or slow down as conditions change.  Overall I was not very happy with this portion of the website because there was just not a lot of information available For the rest of the content that I teach throughout the year.

Lesson 1:  World Book Exploration

Basic Discovery Questions:

1.  Using World Book Kids, I found that the information was pretty general, however very good for kids of ages K-4.  The pictures and videos that were available make the information interactive and fun.

2.  Using World Book Student, I found that the pictures and videos were about the same as World Book Kids.  However, the information that was available was much more specific and in depth.  I would definitely recommend using this for kids in grades 5-9.

3.  Using World Book Advanced, I noticed right away that the information presented on the right and left side of the screen was just like using the encyclopedia's in the library.  The main difference was that is was much easier to use.  I looked up information on Rio, and it gave me many choices in the search.  I then selected Rio De Janerio.  As far as the types of information that would be most available for my students, I feel that all the information they would need was present.  I really liked the Citation part of the page, where they list the resources used for the articles and in the different formats.

4.  I thought that the World Book Discover was pretty similar to the World Book Advanced.  However, the ability to change the languages from Spanish to French was amazing.  I have a couple of ESL students and to be able to change the information to Spanish would help them considerably.

Common Core Connections

I currently teach 9th grade physical science.  When using the World Book Student site I searched for information on Newton's Laws of Motion because that is what we are currently learning about in class. The information presented was very good and really liked all the different resources the kids could use to find information.  The fact the kids could watch a small video describing Newtons Third Law was outstanding because I have a lot of students who are visual learners and this would help them a ton.  The common core standard I would have covered with this information was 9-12.P.2.2  Students are able to predict motion of an object using Newtons Laws.