Lesson 6

For the first part of this assignment I searched for "Astronomy".  I limited my search by clicking the Full Text tab, and I set the publication dates to 2000-2013.  I received 34 results back.  Near the top, I found two very good books.  The first was "Astronomy Demystified" by Stan Gibilisco, published in 2003.  This was a very good choice as it was a very readable text that covers a wide range of astronomy topics.  I really like the way the books are presented with the clickable Table of Contents, so that a user can easily and quickly move to another section of the book.  The icons for Search and Bookmarks were also very handy and easy to use.  Another great feature was the Cite icon, which is wonderful for students to use when creating their Works Cited or Bibliography pages.  Another great book, which really pulled me in was "Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions & Misuses" by Philip C. Wiley Plait, published in 2002.  This book did not have a clickable quick links to the chapters the way the first book did, but it did have a table of contents with the pages listed.  You could then type the page number in the field at the bottom of the book to jump to that page.  Great resource!

For the second part, searching for resources for Constitution Day, I have to admit that I was not familiar with that particular event, so I had to first do a little research to learn what it was.  Then, I first searched "Constitution" and found "Companion to the United States Constitution and Its Amendments" by John R. Vile.  This looks like a good resource for understanding the Constitution.  Then I searched "United States Citizen" and found the book "Living in the U.S.A." by Alison Raymod Lanier and Jef C. Davis.  It is a book written for people who are not actually from the United States as a guide to our culture, values, and society.  I thought it was quite interesting to read about things that we who have lived here our whole lives take for granted that 'everyone' knows, but really they don't.

For the last part of the assignment, I searched Nebraska in the Publisher field and found 88 books published by the University of Nebraska Press.  These included a wide variety of topics, as well as some actually about the west.  A search of Oklahoma resulted in 82 results from mainly the University of Oklahoma Press, with the same variety of topics, and also many directly about the west.  One book that I thought was interesting was a book about Lewis & Clark's journey.  In the synopsis, it listed the states that were mentioned in the book.  Interestingly enough, neither South Dakota or North Dakota were included.  I did not take the time to read the book however, so I do not know if they were actually excluded or not.

Interesting assignment.  I have used the Mega EBSCO before to find magazine articles, but I have not used the e-books before.  I learned a lot about another great resource.

Lesson 5

This week's assignment is again very timely for me to use in my classroom.  At the Gale Virtual Reference Library, when I chose "Title List", the first book on the list was "Alternative Energy".  This week my physical science class will be doing research on the various ways electricity is generated.  A quick look in this three volume title showed that this will be another great reference to point my students toward when they are doing their research.

I searched for Hydroelectric Power Plants in the search box.  I received 188 results.  Of those results not all of them were directly about hydroelectric power - some were about other forms of alternative energy.  One of the results was an entry about Generators from the Gayle Encylopedia of Science.  It was a very good article and I especially liked the Key Terms at the end of the article.

Lesson 4

The assignment is to do a basic search in Proquest on something that interests me.  My physics class is going to be researching, designing, and building solar ovens this week, so I searched 'Solar Ovens'. There were 1200 results.  I liked the icons that indicated if the results were from magazines, trade journals, scholarly journals, etc.  I found many great articles with instuctions on how to build a variety of solar ovens from the simple to more complex, as well as articles about where and why solar ovens are used.  This will be a great resource for my students to use instead of a Google search which gives way too many results that are not relevent.

When I chose the Publication tab I learned that Proquest has over 4400 publications available. I searched for Chemistry journals and found 8. I was interested in learning that there is such a thing as the American Association of Cereal Chemists published in St. Paul.  While it and the other chemistry journals I looked at seem to be beyond the scope of a high school chemistry class, I think if a student was doing research on a chemistry topic, this would be a wonderful resource to find scholarly journal articles.

Lesson 3

I looked up Black Footed Ferrets in SIRS Discoverer.  There were 30 resources all together.  Of these, there were 4 newspaper articles & 15 magazine articles.  There were several older articles as well as some from 2012, including from magazines such as Science World, Ranger Rick, and National Geographic Young Explorer.  All the articles included proper citations near the bottom.  There were also 3 reference articles, nine graphics, and a really excellent web page.

In the Database Features I selected Country Facts and investigated Germany.  It included basic information similar to what one would find in an encyclopedia, major historical events, a map, the flag, and also a section with interesting facts about the country.

In the Skills Discoverer section I chose, Science, then Inventions.  There was a Featured Interactive that proveded 4 games, as well as a link for more websites that led back to the main web links one would get to if they had searched from the home page.

In SIRS Issues Researcher I chose Gun Control from the quick links in the middle of the page.  It was easy to use and proveded excellent resources.  I really liked the note organizer link that popped up a graphic organizer.  I think that would be a great resource for students to visually organize their data.

In the Curriculum Pathfinders there was a nice selection of topics.  I chose science.  There was Research Ideas, Interactives, and Subject Areas.  I chose Chemistry and found lots of websites, articles, refrences, and other media.  Good resource!