Hobbies and Crafts

Oh I loved this assignment and have actually spent time on the site everyday this week.  I choose Arts and Crafts as my category and then Jewelry Making with the word Bracelet in the find box.  I spent a lot of time looking at what the tabs had to offer.  So I visited Video, periodicals, projects,  just to see what sort of information they contained.  Under projects I did find a wonderful project called Pearly Girl from a magazine about using pearls and crystals to make  a bracelet, necklace and earrings.  I  saved it to my laptop for future reference.  I looked at the Help section and read about saving to a folder, which seemed like a good idea if I was going to use the site often, and especially for someone who might have limited space on their own computer.  I didn't do this because you ave to register an account and at the moment I don't want to do that.

I did wish that the search results had little photos next to the results, much like Amazon has book covers next to the title.  I had to look at many articles that were not what I wanted and a photo would have eliminated much of that.

The Help site was incredibly detailed.  I did watch the Hobbie and Craft tutorial which was helpful.  There was lots of information that clients would find useful.  This site contains so much about so many different things that knowing how to do an advanced search would be useful.

I have already told several people about this and I'm sure that I will tell many more.

I found that the tutorial was very helpful and watched it twice. Once before I did my search and then again afterwards.  It was short and to the point which I appreciated.

I  did a search on Garrett Mason who has posted a bunch of signs that I pass on the way to work.  He is running for a position in the state senate I think.   So I learned  quite a bit about doing a search.  First I had to put his name in quotes to keep from getting articles with  references to  either just  Garrett or just  Mason.  Then I went back and said I only wanted  articles, features or front page news.  Otherwise I was getting too many letters to the editor.  I found it is really helped to be very specific with your searches otherwise you end up sifting through hundreds of articles.  I spent some time researching in the obituaries.

I was unable to create an alert though I tried several times and on different days.  I finally created an account and did save my search, but still was unable to create an alert.

I'm finding it fun to look at some of the other blogs.

I didn't show anyone anything about Marvel yet, but I have talked about it quite a bit.  The Maine Newsstand is something lot of teachers have said they will use because many of the newspapers will not let you search their site unless you are a subscriber.

lesson 2a Britannica School Edtion part 3

My first thought is that this level is all business.  Look at all the text and not so many graphics.  The country that I chose was Iran.  I did notice the side bar on the right, but without knowing what my patron might be researching it is hard to know what exactly would be most helpful.  I, myself, usually work from broad to narrow, so I would start with the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia for general and background information.  I  then went to the Encyclopedia Britannica main article on Iran and found a lot of information.  The table of contents on the left side could be particularly useful in finding more specific information.  I took a quick look at Daily Life and Social Customs and then got sucked in to looking a the next section  on crafts.

I read about learning to use workspace and really like the idea.  It may be a bit too difficult for some of the younger kids, but certainly by 4th and 5th grader should be able to use it.  I know that remembering a password is often a problem, but I think it would be manageable.  I'm going to play with it a bit myself  and see how useful I find it. I'm sure that a shared folder might be really useful with all the students.  It would be especially helpful when  students are working together  on a project, but can't always be together.  The information would be available at home too.

I found lot of information on this site but at times I did find it difficult to navigate...to get back to where I started.  I might read the Help section to see if I could learn more about using the site.

Lesson 2a Britannca School editon part 2

The Middle school level is much more grown up looking.  I did the encyclopedia search for fisher and came up with nothing.  The same image that was on the elementary level was found under Media on the right hand side.

This time the Magazine and Journal  search was quick, but no article on fishers.  There were many pages, but no way to refine my search, so I was getting  articles that had fisher as an author's name.  I did notice the uses of Lexile levels so you could limit by readability which was nice.

Under Additional Content,  this level had Britannica Concise Encyclopedia which the younger version didn't.  That search resulted in an article which was very short with no images.  Not really enough for doing a report, just very basic information. I did try the double click dictionary which was quite good. It even gave the etymology.

Searching on the Web's Best Sites I got the same article that I had found using the elementary search.

Under Features I did try the  A to Z browse with no results and I also looked under Media for an image with no results.

I did learn some things about blogging while doing this.  I accidentally closed my blog before I published it and was able to find it again.  Apparently it saves while you are creating your post, thank goodness.  I also got a message saying something about an error while trying to save or publish, but it had published my post.

Lesson 2a - Britannica Part 1

I chose an animal that students often ask about, a fisher.  At the elementary level   I did a regular search in the encyclopedia  using the word fisher.   There were quite a few articles about fisherman but none on the animal.  There was an image , but I was unable to find any written article.  Then I checked under Additional  Content -Journals and magazines.  This was taking so long to load that I stopped the search and clicked on  The web's best websites.  The first site listed was Defenders of Wildlife  - Fisher, so I tried that.  Here I found basic facts about fishers which was quite good. It was divided in to categories such as Diet, Range, Behavior, etc.  I learned about the habitat from reading the Behavior section.   This was short and sweet, but quite informative.

• fisher. Art. Encyclopedia Britannica. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.  <http://school.eb.com.ursus-proxy-9.ursus.maine.edu/elementary/art-5487>.    
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•  Playing with citing the images.  Easy to do on the Britannica page (lower image).  Wondering if using these images is a copyright violation.  I did go back and try to see if there was anything under Journals and magazines, but once again it was so slow that I stopped the search. I also looked in Animal Kingdom  under Features, but found nothing.