World Book Databases

In World Book Kids, I explored “Compare Places” and was excited to find it was similar to the Compare Animals.  Students have the option of filtering by continents, countries, dependencies and providences.  The compare table included area, population, life expectancy, internet users, armed forces, capital, continent, government and others.  “Print this page” is a useful feature.  Each country that I compared had a link to the article of that country.  The tab to Explore the country, allowed you to view just that country’s facts and included related photos and also the option to listen to the national anthem.  At the very bottom was a link to the CIA World Factbook.  This will be very useful for teachers and students when they focus on Central and South America.

I looked at the Compare Places under World Book Students as I wanted to see the difference between the two World Books.  They were in all areas except for a much more detailed article on the country chosen.  Depending on the capability of the student, either WB Kids or Student could be used.  I have used the Biography Centre before and have had students search for a variety of important people.  I have previously used the timelines and citation builder with students so decide to look at How To Do Research under the Research Tools.  There is a clear structure provided for either students and teachers.  I am currently helping 6^th grade Social Studies teachers with a research project for students on a famous person.  This outline could be very helpful in guiding the project.  Under Plan Your Research, there are listed possible questions for biographies, countries, animals, historical events and literature(fiction and nonfiction).  This will be an excellent resource to use to guide the students through a research project.  There was even an great video that answered the question, “Why do I need World Book when Wikipedia is free?”  For teachers there is provided a structure as well for teaching research skills.  My favorite page was Teaching Research Skills which provide a variety of activities to help with teaching the process of research.  The Research Project Calculator is an interesting tool which provides an outline of the type of project you are doing and the amount of time each section should take to complete.

I explored E-Book Center in World Book Advanced and found I could search by author, title, genre and language.  The option for format (downloadable) was also available.  I searched Juvenile literature  and found 256 results.  I selected Grimm’s Fairy tales as I know a teacher who includes this in her Mythology class.  There were many Grimm’s tales which I had never heard of before.  I then searched Andersen’s Fairy Tales.  The left side bar provided an outline of the various fairy tales and selecting one would let you jump to that section.  The reliable tools that I would find from World book are available for the eBooks  such as print, translate, save section, save to My Research, email, and text read aloud.  To the left of the page are links for related information and related encyclopedia content.  My students are showing an increase interest in ebooks.  I also have students who are looking for more Classic literature and this would be an excellent resource for them.

I decided to explore World Book Explain Videos under Reference Tools in WB Discover.  Videos were organized in the left side bar: Animals, Arts, entertainment, and culture, Health and medicine, Life science, Physical science, U.S. government, U.S history and World history.  The most interesting item I found was at the bottom of the page, another way to search videos by WB partners.  Videos from organizations included Plimoth Plantation, Seaworld, Salem Witch Museum, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, National World War II Museum and several others.  I select Salem Witch Museum and received 10 video results.  I wondered from the beginning why there was a button labeled Ask a Question.  This seems to lead to student input for the video collection.   As I started to watch some of the videos, they often began with a student introducing themselves and asking a question.  This would be a great additional resource for teachers to include in various subjects.  6^th grade could use the World History section and explore Ancient civilizations.  There were only 6 video results but this could lead to students asking questions for additional videos in areas of Ancient Eygpt and Rome.  The videos seemed a reasonable length and seemed straight to the point of the question.