Lesson 5: Gale Virtual Reference Library

Advanced Challenge

From the GVRL main page I scrolled down and looked at the subjects on the left.  Clicking on World and Nation I found several reference books.  A helpful one was Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Holidays, another one was Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World. In the Encyclopedia of Holidays there is an area called Calendar of Selected Holidays and person could look through the calendar and find spring holidays. Then going to the Index, I would look up the spring holidays and get the information about how it's celebrated.  The Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipies also has information about food for major holidays.

 

2. I was very happy to see so many titles published in 2012.  One of my favorites is "UXL American Decades 2000-2009".  Another one I liked was "Gale E-Commerce Sourcebook, 2012." Topics, especially about technology, should be recently published.  In the past I've found GVRL a little lacking in recently published material.  I also believe that they should weed out many books over 5 years old.

Common Core Connections

I read Classroom Questions page(s): 310-314. Encylopedia of Education DAVID SADKER . Ed. James W. Guthrie .  Vol. 1.  2^nd ed.  New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003" and Instructional Strategies  page(s): 1178-1186. Encylopedia of Education RICHARD I. ARENDS and SHARON CASTLE . Ed. James W. Guthrie .  Vol. 4.  2^nd ed.  New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2002. "

Both articles discussed helping students achieve higher order thinking and problem solving skills. They had ideas and examples.  The publication dates of those two articles concerned me a little bit.  I would like to see newer education titles.

CC. 11-12. W.9 Research to Build and Present Knowledge: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. 1.1.6. Read , view, and listen for information presented in any format (e.g. textual, visual, media, digital) in order to make inferences and gather meaning.

Students will find information about progaganda during WWI and WWII.  They will write an essay that 
(1) compares progaganda from each war,
(2) explains why the various methods of producing and distributing propaga were used ( did radio change the way it was distributed? what about motion pictures? why were posters used?)
(3) explains the audience of the propaganda (soldiers to build morale, citizens to encourge rationing)

This task can be accomplished by searching "war propaganda" under the History subject tab. Two good sources that came up were World War I Reference Library and World War II Reference Library.

Proquest

Advanced Challenge:

1. A full text search for Les Miserables resulted in 5359 results, many of which were about the movie and  theatrical musicals. Selecting "literary criticismfrom" the subject list rsulted in 302 results. Again, it containied irrelevant things.  Selecting "novels" as a subgroup under "literary criticism" brought the number down to 82, but there were some non-English articles so by selecting "English" under "language there were 79 results. Finally selecting "commentary" under "document type" resulted in 23 managable results.

2. Searching full text  "hurricane Sandy AND libraries" brought up 668 results. By sorting them by date with newest first I discovered there were several with references to "Sandy Hook".  So I added not "Sandy Hook" to my original search sorted them by date.  There were fewer results but I couldn't find a way to get information only about the huriricane's impact on the libraries. I messed with subjects, document type, publication title and sources type, but couldn't get it narrowed down. I would be very interested to see what everyone else came up with.


Common Core Connections:

I don't think I would encourge my high school students to use ProQuest.  It is a very cumbersome database that lacks intuitive searching.  It seems very "librarian-like" which is to say, people who are not librarians do not think in terms of subject, publication title, document type, classification and tags.  This is more suited to an academic setting and I would think the end-user would have to have a librarian right next to them during the whole search to help them.  My patience was seriously tested with this database and I'm a librarian!  I can't imagine what a high school student would make of this.

SIRS

Advanced Challenge

Sirs Discover

 1. I searched "solar system" in the advanced search page.  I selected reading level easy and entered a lexile range from 400 to 800. Of the 8 results only one was useful.  It was called "Mars is more than a Candy Bar".  But it had "solar system" as a descriptor on the results page so I choose that.  The new results all different reading levels,, so I selected "Lexile" and then the results were shown from lowest lexile to highest. We ended up with 3 good articles.

2. A general search using the term "volcano" resulted in 137 images of volcanoes. By clicking on the "science" icon, then selecting "geography/geology", and then selecting "volcanoes" and then finally selecting the "graphics" tab, I ended up with 157 images of volcanoes.


Sirs Issues Researcher

1. I did a general search on "teen suicide" and ended up with 6 website results.  After looking at them only 3 seemed relevant. A Sirs search for "teen sucide prevention" resulted in 0 websites. A Google search on "teen suicide" resulted in several hit or miss sites.  However, a Google search for "teen suicide prevention" resulted in many relevant sites.  I actually liked the Google search better, because it is faster and because it led me to better sites.

2. Selecting "water use" from the Leading Issues list you can get the pros and cons of water conservation. Also searches for "water conservation" or "water supply result in good articles.

Common Core Connections

LIFE SCIENCE STANDARDS
CC9-10RS/TS1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts, attending to the precise details of explanations or descriptions.

HS.SI.1.1 Evaluate resources for reliability. (Reliability can be determined by currency, credibility, authority, etc.  Depending on the curriculum topic)

Students will use Sirs Issues Researcher to find two to four graphs that present inforamation about their global warming topic. Topics could incude carbon monoxide emmissions, deforestation, natural disasters, etc. Once they find the graphs they will compare them and explain if the conclusions drawn from each one is the same or different. They will also analyze the author or crator of each graph.  What are the authors trying to tell you? Are the authors expressing a bias? Was the research conducted for the graph academic or commercial? ETC.