Week 8

Week 8: Archive Grid

I learned that Sitting Bull’s name was actually Tatanka Iyotake or Tatanka Iyotanka or Ta-Tanka I-Yotan and that he was the leader of the Hunpapa Sioux.  That was new to me. 

I searched ‘Silence Dogood’ hoping to find the originals letters but found nothing.  Then I searched ‘Benjamin Franklin letters’ and got several hits. When I clicked on the first one, it said ‘this page does not exist or has been renamed.’  I tried several other hits and most said ‘contact an archivist to learn more about access to materials in this collection.  This would be great for social study classes and history buffs.

CAMIO

It was fun to see pictures of items that Paul Revere made as a silversmith.  The details on the tea urn and spoon were beautiful. There were also covered bowls, more urns, a sugar bowl and cover, all exquisitely made. 

‘Sioux’ brought up pictures of Native American clothing, pipes, and many pictures of NA life.

I was disappointed that ‘Harvey Dunn’ brought no results but neither did ‘Terry Redlin’.  ‘Van Gogh’  brought up 48 pictures of his paintings.  The pictures were of good quality.

Since we do not offer art classes at our school, this would be a way to explore art and expose our rural students to the world of art.

It was nice that the slide show of the images looped.  It was easy to move the images around and compare them.  I didn’t try the Web page feature but it looked easy to use.

Common Core:  8.SL.5 Integrates multimedia and visual display into presentations… For math, students could look at pieces of art and find mathematical images within them such as circles, squares, parabolas.  They could also import the images into a graphing calculator and find the equations of the parabola.

Week 7

WorldCat and More FirstSearch Indexes

Great Resource for librarians!  I’ve used this database for the information to put an entire library online and also for cataloging 2 church collections. 

I used the advanced search feature to search for a book I remember reading in grade school ‘Runaway Alice’. There were lots of hits.  Item #1 showed 16 copies worldwide. The top library is the Hartford Public Library in Illinois.  The LC call no. is PZ7.M9532. The subjects descriptor only had one:  Children’s stories.  I did see and alternate title ‘A nickel for Alice’.  Using the information I found, I searched online used bookstores and found a copy for myself.  Can’t wait to read it! Again.

Searched the WorldCat dissertations and theses and found that my uncle’s dissertation is in the National Agriculture Library in MD if I should ever want to read it.

In the OAIster database, I found an actual letter written to a lady in Minnesota from Sinclair Lewis talking about his journey through North and South Dakota. It looked like it was and actual scan of the letter.  Very cool.

I found the book ‘Digital Teaching Platforms : customizing classroom learning for each student’  and lo and behold, the top library is the South Dakota State Library.  May have to check that one out this summer!

Enjoyed this resource very much and spent way too much time looking for old books I remember.

Common Core:  If you can think of it you can find it.  8.W.8 Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively. 

Week 6

Week 6:  I used EbscoHost a lot when it was still NetLibrary.  I have a friend who is a paleontologist and I went to here to read some of his books. I searched ‘T-Rex Sue’ and found a book on Sue’s history from discovery to the government’s confiscation and eventual home at the Chicago Museum.  Some of the books I had read earlier were no longer in the collection.  I am able to find books here that I would like to read but do not wish to purchase.    The 15 minute non active checkout time is good but I get dumped a lot. 

Searching ‘Constitution Day’ in all text fields brought up a lot of titles but nothing that seemed relevant.  When searching in Subject or Category, nothing was found.  Not the best resource for this type of search.

Searching ‘Oklahoma’ as publisher brought us several titles.  The Rapid City Indian School, 1898-1933’ was one I found interesting.  I had never heard of it.  I also liked the ‘Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West.”  I added it to my folder to peruse later.

Common Core: 8.RL and 8.RIT could both be covered here since the eBooks collections consist of both fiction and non-fiction.  

Week 5

Week 5: Gale Virtual Reference Library

I chose to look at: Ancient Europe, 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1000, 2004.  I read an article about Stonehenge and then searched Vikings within the text. The Vikings started invading England around 789 BC and they started the town of Dublin, Ireland.  The information was more archaeological which was not what I expected.  I found much more information when I searched the correct volume.  I found it easy to read and suitable for HS students and possibly JH students.  I see this as useful in a history classroom rather than a math classroom.

I tried searching ‘flipped classroom’, a hot topic in math but nothing came up so I tried ‘mass customized learning’ which yielded 2 articles about education and then numerous articles on steroids which didn’t make sense.  I opened the article ‘Technology in Education’ from the Encyclopedia of Education and was pleased that it was exactly what I was looking for.

The listening feature is great for students who are poor readers but I found it slow for my reading speed.  I did like that I could download the article to my eReader for later. The citation tools were great, too.

I know the GVRL also has many titles for Elementary students but I gather that SDSL does not subscribe to them since I didn’t see many titles for lower grades.

Common Core:  8.RIT.1 and 8.RIT.10 are 2 of the CC that stand out but actually all of the 8.RIT Reading: Informational Text would apply to most any article in this reference library.

Week 4: Proquest

Week 4: Proquest

I searched PCOS since I had recently heard the term and was curious.  WOW, there was more information here than I could ever hope to digest.  After scanning several abstracts which were very technical and overwhelming, I finally came across one that was more layman friendly and I learned a lot about the syndrome.  This is an excellent resource for in depth research and contains current information on hot topics. The ability to find the correct citation for research is invaluable and is easy with Proquest.

I looked at several blogs and I chose to comment on Information Media Specialist’s blog. She had commented that she could not see any Common Core connections. My comment was “One the big ideas behind Common Core is learning to extract information from articles, pamphlets, or anything that might be published in the 'real world'.  Students need to practice this to get good at it and I've found Discoverer useful in this respect.”

I searched ‘math’ and was disappointed that there was only one magazine ‘Scholastic Math Magazine’ found.  On the up side, I get an occasional free copy and have found many interesting articles and brain teasers that I can use with my classes so it’s good to know I can access this magazine when I’m looking for supplemental material. 

This led me to go back to a basic search and look for ‘ literature in math.’  There were hundreds of articles so now I have another resource for my students when looking for math related articles.

Common Core 8h grade math:

CC G.MG.1 Use geometric shapes, their measures, and their properties to describe objects.

The article ‘Crazy Construction’ in the most recent issue of Scholastic Math Magazine has students figuring out the surface area of buildings and comparing it to the surface area of their school.  This could then lead in to finding the volume also.

Week 3

Sirs Discoverer: Looking up hedgehogs, we found many fiction stories and non-fiction articles about hedgehogs. The option of emailing an article to a student or myself is a great feature, especially for group collaboration.  The color coded reading ability scale makes it easy for students to find an article or story on their level.

From the Home page, it’s easy to navigate to any country by using the sidebar.  Mexico was the country of choice to research.  The first page gives general information about the country and a condensed history.  There are many interactive links to further explore topics dealing with Mexico. I chose Mayas and many articles were listed, again with the color-coded reading levels.  The articles also contained Lexile scores.

Maps of the World on the sidebar pulls up 47 different maps of Mexico, ranging from historical maps to pictures of Mexico.

Educators’ Resources led me to Curriculum Tools where the Skills Discoverer link revealed games and activities for several subjects including math.  Interactive videos and games made this a fun site to explore.

One Common Core link was visual 3D geometry representations of polyhedrons which directly addresses the properties and relationships in geometry.

SIRS Issues Researcher: I looked for ‘Flipped Classroom’ and ‘Mass Customized Learning’ , hot topics in math education, but came up with no results.  Search results for ‘Algebra’ listed several articles, mostly about the importance of Algebra and where we are failing in American Education.

Curriculum Pathfinders: Math: The History of Math was fun to explore.  Since Pi day was in March, I read some articles on the history of Pi, which were very interesting.  There was also the option of printing the article.  There are also helpful tools for math: calculators, math exercises, math games.