Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Challenge 1b - World Book Public Library

My initial opinion of the World Book Public Library Edition is that is it very similar to the School Edition.  The information in the Online Kids Special Features is virtually identical.  The crafts, science projects, maps, and animals are the same in both editions.  

One difference I did note is that there are different games.  I think I like the games in the Public Library edition best.  The spelling and history mazes were fun!  Most of my patrons are more interested in computer games than research, so I think I will show them these games:  kids can have fun while reviewing what they have learned! 

All the special features should be popular with our many home-school patrons.  They can be used to supplement lessons and provide information for various projects.

In the Info Finder, I checked out the Virtual Tours.  I liked them!  These are similar to the World Book Explains videos in the World Book Discover, although there are more videos on a wider range of topics in Discover.  Visual learners will appreciate these short videos.  One of my teacher friends does a Titanic unit with her students.  I'll make sure she knows about the Titanic Virtual Tours. 

The E-Book Center in the Online Reference Center is the same (or nearly the same) as in World Book Advanced.  I looked at several books in the "juvenile literature" genre.  I recognized some that I borrowed from my local library when I was little (like the "Twins" series by Perkins)!  They were old then, so by today's standards they are practically ancient classics!  Having access to classic titles could be helpful to a student who has a report due tomorrow and the library is closed!  I did look up Emma by Jane Austen.  I followed a trail of articles and ended up looking at a slide show of her home in England!  How cool is that!?!

Monday, January 28, 2013

Here We Go Again... Challenge 1a World Book School Edition

The Electronic Resources Challenge is up and running again, and I am behind already!  Maybe it's because I've been spending too much time playing with my new iPhone!  I went from sharing a "dumb" phone with my husband (he usually carried it...) to my own iPhone!  There's something new to learn every day! 

But back to the business at hand:  World Book Student Edition

After exploring most of the special features in World Book Kids (looking at different animals, comparing states, playing several games, putting puzzles together), I have decided that using these features is more like play than work.  You can learn all sorts of things painlessly! 

Our Story Time theme this session is wild animals.  So I will be using the "World of Animals" feature to learn quick facts about the animal of the week.  If our Children's Room was open, I would also have this feature open on the computers for the kids to explore before and after Story Time.  One of these weeks I hope to do a demo for the Story Time parents and show them this site.  I know the kids would enjoy looking at the pictures and videos. 

When we have school classes visit the library, I show them the World Book Student.  We look up topics that they are currently researching.  I usually don't use the Special Features, but after exploring them today, I will remember to point them out to the kids.  I had fun taking several trivia quizzes in the "Quizzes and Activities" section.  I confess I did not do too well.  Guess I don't know as much trivia as I thought!  "Surf the Ages" was fun as well.  The brief bits of information are a jumping off point for kids wanting to learn more about periods of history.

In the "E-Book Center" of World Book Advanced I looked up both of the assigned texts.  I know ebooks are the wave of the future, but I prefer my fairy tales to have beautiful illustrations, which this ebook edition of Andersen's Fairy Tales did not have.  I did like the fact that I could click right over to an article about Andersen and then go even further with articles about Denmark and Copenhagen. 

For fun I perused some of the other titles available and found a book from my youth:  The Adventures of Reddy Fox.  My dad had a copy of this book when he was young, along with other Thornton W. Burgess titles.  When my siblings and I learned to read, dad's old books were always available to us.  So this blast from the past was a fun diversion.  Unfortunately, the related article was less than helpful.  It was a "back in time" article which was a list of children's books from  1960.  Old Mother West Wind, by Burgess was listed way down in the article under New Editions of Old Favorites."  That's all there was - no other information about the book or author.  I actually went to WorldCat to see when Reddy Fox was first published (1913).

I'm not sure how I will use this with my patrons, but it's a feature I was unaware of previously.  So I did learn something new today.

I wasn't sure I would enjoy World Book Discover "Reference Tools," but then I found the World Book Explains Videos.  I spent quite a bit of time looking at different videos that answer all sorts of questions.  (Can penguins fly?  Who was the messiest president?  Was there a point where the south could have won the American Civil War?....)  I can see students using this feature to get answers to their questions - and maybe even answers to questions they didn't know they had!

So this is all for today.  Tomorrow I will try to tackle World Book Public Library (in between sessions of Story Time).