Lesson 1a - Electronic Challenge

World Book Student Edition

1.                       I chose to look up gorilla because I have currently finished reading The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.  This book is a Newbery nominee for 2013 and I highly recommend reading this book.  In World Book Kids, I searched gorillas and came up with 13 items.  In the left tool bar labeled More Information, the list included articles (13), pictures (3) and videos (4).  These where all the resources that where tagged with gorilla.  Only one article was titled gorilla.  Once I clicked on the title, gorilla, I was able to view the article which included information on the lexile level, two photos, three videos and one sound bite, along with four paragraphs.  The gorilla’s habitat is the rain forests of Africa where they live in groups, foraging for food and sleeping on the ground or trees.

A tool box was above the article and gave the options to print, save, email and translate this article.  There is also an option to have the article read aloud.  Additionally, citation information is included as well as  related information/articles.  The related article was on Diane Fossey. 

 

"Gorilla." World Book Kids World Book, 2013. Web. 24 Jan. 2013.

 

               

               

2.        I used the link at the bottom of the first article to jump to World Book Student.  Instead of going to the home page, the link took me directly to the search results for “gorilla” in Student.  In World Book Student, there were 35 articles tagged with gorilla.  The left side bar for the search results gave many more items beyond what Kids gave.  Additional results for Student included dictionary (1), maps (1), tables (3), pictures (9), videos (4), back in time articles (72), special reports (5) and a website.  This makes it very easy to explore my topic more in depth.  Once I selected the article titled gorilla, I am rewarded with a much longer article at a lexile level of 1120 (7.4 grade level).  There is more detail given in the description of the habitat.  The article describes two different gorillas and the locations they live.  The option I really like is the ability to print a subsection instead of the whole article.  This recently helped with a 6^th grade class doing Ancient Egypt research as they were looking for very detailed information and only printed the specific information relevant to their project.

Susman, Randall L."Gorilla." World Book Student. World Book, 2013. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.

 

3.        In World Book Advanced, I searched the country of Peru.  The first results screen offered a variety of information.  In the middle of the screen are the articles in which the world “Peru” appears.  The right side bar contains primary sources and ebooks linked to my search term.  The left side bar contains results much like that in World Book Student but with additional sources such as ebooks, US supreme court Cases, maps, historical maps, special reports, web sites and a research guide.  In the article on the country of Peru the left side bar contains the content outline of the article.  Clicking on the content areas on the left will jump you to that section in the article.  The tool box is also in this Advanced edition as it was in the Student edition. The right side of the screen has three boxes with related information, primary source information and content standards.  The article outline will appeal to middle school students who are looking for more detailed information.  The teachers which I consider valuable patrons will be able to explore lesson plans and the content standards as they apply to the article, grade level and subject taught.  Something for everyone.

León, Miguel A."Peru." World Book Advanced. World Book, 2013.

 

4.        In World Book Discoverer, I selected the History and Government under the topics heading on the right of the screen.  The next screen gave me two choices which were basically the definitions/explanations of history and government.  However on the left side bar, it allowed me to “dig deeper” and I selected government.  The next page gave me many result articles, a least eight pages but I did not see a total to the number of articles.  To the left again was the opportunity to “dig deeper”, with choices including American, Australian, Canadian and European governments, other governments and organizations.  Once I selected American government, I was presented with a more specific list of articles.  The left side bar once again gave the opportunity to “dig deeper”, including documents, organizations, and people.  In this list of American government I chose “The Pledge of Alligiance”.   The left side bar with the article gives the patron the choice to translate the article into another language.  This is a useful tool for those still learning English as they can translate the article to help them understand the information and nothing is lost in translation.

"Pledge of Allegiance." World Book Discover. World Book, 2013. Web. 28 Jan. 2013.