Lesson 9

Lesson 9 History and Genealogy resources

1. Under my own name in Ancestry.com I found phone book references to myself and underneath some  ‘possible relations’. A few of them I know, although the birth date category was at least 5 years off on them.

2. I was able to locate my grandfather and his siblings in the census, as well as my grandparents wedding certificate.

3. The only screen that I could just put in South Dakota in the search box with no other terms was under the advanced search. Using the picture link on the left side I was left with many baseball references and some yearbook pictures.

4. Heritage quest. I searched for my grandfathers’ name. I know the family is from the east coast and I know that someone had a book made with the family history going back to England and Scotland, I wondered if some one had submitted it for heritage quest but I am not sure of the name. I did find not find the book I was looking for but I did find another that may have been written by a relative, the first name was Chester which was a common name in our family, but I am not sure how common it might have been at that time period. The book I located was about the history of their town, not the family.

5. Sanborn maps is a great resource. I tried looking for the location of our school; this could be used for a map lesson or SD history to show the progress of our town by showing how just a few years ago our school and most of their homes were fields. I also looked up maps of our family land.  It was interesting to see the patchwork of where various family members own the plots and where the old buildings were located, most were gone but at least 1 house is still standing. 

Lesson 8

Lesson 8 ArchiveGrid/ CAMIO

ArchiveGrid would be an interesting source for serious researchers. I found a bid difference in the search results using quotations vs. without them. Even though there is no photo of the artifact in question, the description provided the location as well as several variants of Sitting Bull’s name, which could provide additional search results in this and other databases. The researcher would have to determine if the travel to the various destinations would benefit their project.

 I searched for Eric Carle, as I know that there is a collection of materials at the University of Minnesota. There are also collections at the U of Connecticut and from the publisher. The index is interesting but as there are no images, for someone looking to do serious research it would still be difficult to determine just from this where they may want to spend more time.

CAMIO

I love having access to these images and being able to see the locations where they can be seen. Searching for Paul Revere gave several results for silver service items from spoons to teapots, I only looked on the first few pages but thought it was interesting there were several spoons but no other silverware.

Searching for “sioux’ did not produce any results so I removed the quotes and got a variety of artifacts. Several were clothing articles, pipes, and there were many colored pencil drawings showing daily life and ceremonies from Sioux life.

I couldn’t decide on a favorite so I looked at both Monet and Renoir. Some of the Monet’s had locations in their titles, but the Renoirs were more portraits. Some had names in the titles and subject headings such as ‘children’ but no other background information. It would be nice to have a link to further information on the subjects of the artwork such as if he were commissioned to paint the portraits or if they were of family or friends (although a serious art student would probably have other venues to search for this information)

The favorites is an interesting feature and great for keeping track of the images as you do different searches or navigate through the pages. I like that you can move the images around and save them. I have not tried from home, I am wondering if the images will appear the same when I get somewhere away from the connection at school as it appears to save as a webpage. I think this would be a great feature to use for history lessons as well as art as several Common Core standards refer to using this type of resource. 

Lesson 7 World Cat

Lesson 7 World Cat

1.  I like the variety of searching methods, especially if you are looking for an unusual title, or one that you know would have many possibilities such as ‘bears’. Using the series or ISBN is useful. Sometimes searching for DVD titles is especially difficult.

2. I found 2535 Libraries world wide with books that had the title ‘Malice’ . There were 262 results with 118 in English. The first book on the list was by Danielle Steel, held by the Alexander Mitchell library. When I tried various limiters I especially liked that adult/juvenile was easy to find at the top and the year was easy as well, you can simply click on a year that is listed with the number of items from that year in parenthesis after it, or put in a range.

3. Being able to click on a subject or author etc. is a great feature for cataloging and also for selection purposes. As I scrolled down the record I also found the record for the same book published by the Australian branch of the company. I did not try any others this time but will try this in the future, as often cataloging books from companies like Scholastic who change the ISBN on books, gets tricky to find from our software.

OAIster  brought up some interesting results. The paper I accessed first was on South Dakota agriculture. The article actually started on the Table of contents page so I missed half of the first paragraph but the navigation made it easy to click back to the first page. I was surprised to see it was written in 1933; before the full force of the dust bowl years. I returned to the results list to find many of the records did not include a publication or copyright date, although a few did include the date in the title or description. Some of the results included items such as letters so this could be a good resource for teachers to include ‘primary sources’ into their lessons.

I would like to look into the possibilities of getting the software so that records could be downloaded into our school software. This would be a great timesaver while still maintaining records with complete subject headings and alternate titles. 

Lesson 6 Ebooks on Ebsco

Lesson 6 Ebooks on Ebsco Host

1. I did several searches and found some books for each search. As the books were all pre-1999 I am not sure that I would recommend this for many users. Depending on the subject some materials may not be very accurate. I found the pages difficult to navigate; the zoom did not work on any of the pages I tried, the small print only appeared on the top half what looks like a full sheet word document and table of contents pages looked blank. After finishing, I can’t say that I would recommend this site to just anyone, I would have to know more about their purpose and their computer ability as the features are a bit awkward to navigate.

Constitution day searches brought up several history books, but descriptions of each did not seem to really fulfill the request. Finding information in any of them seemed laborious for such a search. 

For Western history, a search using  Nebraska in the publisher line brought up nearly all titles published regionally. One was a document on US Indian Policy, which looked like it may be too cumbersome for most students to use. A majority were from the Native American perspective although one on the Orphan Train could provide a different view. Another  title was ‘Fort Laramie to Wounded Knee’ but again could also be a predominately Native perspective; this would not be quickly apparent but could be useful depending on the assignment. 

Lesson 5 - Gale

Lesson 5  Gale Virtual Ref. Library

1. From the list of Gale titles I chose the World War II Background to war. Both World Wars have been hot topics this year for 4-5^th graders and while this book is not specifically aimed to students, t his book was easy enough to read and succinct enough to get the point across. The photos could easily be counted as primary sources for Common core standards. Other books in the series on other historical times would be similarly useful for Social studies either as introductions or wrap-ups for each subject.

2. I searched women in history, as this was a topic for Feb. for 5^th grade. There were a wide variety of subjects and sources. I chose Women and the Constitution. The read aloud feature was easy to listen to, less automated sounding that the one on World book, and using more inflection. The one on World book often mispronounces words like live, using a short I rather than long for certain sentences. 

Challange 4

ProQuest

1. I think ProQuest is definitely for older or more advanced searchers. I chose windfarms from the list under Science and technology topics and found a wide range of sources. I like that it is possible to narrow results to full text articles, and by type of source so I can choose trade or scholarly journals.

1a. I enjoyed looking at the variety of responses on the blogs. I only had a comment for one but for myself I am so glad that I am not the only one that is not done blogging for every week!! I have looked at most of the resources at one time or another, so they are not new, mostly new features or things that I did not go deeply into before. Now, I am looking at the new features and running out of time before I get around to writing about it. I hope that taking the time and writing about the features I find will help me to remember them, even if I don't use them often. 

2.  Twenty nine titles associated with libraries were listed under publications. I was surprised to see some state journals as well as national ones; I was also surprised to see a Pakistan library journal, being so close to such a war-torn area I think that it is easy to forget that many people are going about their normal lives making a living. I like  the ability to look at articles from the latest online issue, but I wish there were a way to see a PDF of the journals to get a better idea of what types of other features are in each issue

Challange 3

Challange 3

SIRS Discoverer

1. Armadillos- Most of the first articles on armadillos seem to be Easy to moderate reading levels. I like to sorting ability by Lexile levels, although I do not know the scale off the top of my head, it makes it easier to find the reading levels for students. With this search, using the date sorting ability is not a top priority so I am glad it is just an optional ability.  I like the way that SIRS puts the ‘file’ tabs at the top of the page to narrow searches by type of resource and that the key for reading levels and article features are always listed at the top of the page.

2. I selected Ireland to explore the country facts in SIRS. I think the country facts chart is very useful in this instance, as they may not be mentioned in various articles. I especially like the Historical maps found in SIRS. I think they could be useful as a backdrop to a historical fiction read or Social Studies lesson as many students may not realize the major changes in our country or others throughout history. The last section I explored was the Biographies.  I like the hint to use the last name as well as the ability to browse by last initial for those who may have trouble spelling. In all the articles I like that ‘Citation’ is listed. As Common Core becomes more natural to us as teachers it will be an asset to have them easily available so students can see the proper format, and for now is a reminder to teachers to remember them.

SIRS Issues

1. One of the first things I like about issues is the alphabetical listing on the page. With the ‘real language’ use in Google and other search engines, students often are frustrated with resources like databases because they are not used to having to think critically about the keywords they use to search. As I look at topics I like that there is an overview to define the subject for those who may not be familiar with the terminology and often magazine or newspaper articles may skip over some of the explanations in order to save space. The Pro/Con section also uses the term essential questions, which is another common core term that will be heard more often in classroom research.  The see also reference is helpful if a student’s questions fall outside the questions posed in the essential questions area.

2. The Curriculum pathfinders are an interesting way to start a project. The when scrolling across the core subjects at the top of the page it shows a list of the course topics along the left and a Wordle type of list of possible topics. For those older students who have a tough time getting started this might help. In the Lanuage Art section I found Fairy tales. Most of the articles were older but ones that may not have showed up in a typical search for fairy tales.