I'm feeling like I'm treading water technologically, staying in a comfort zone with the databases, those old buddies of mine. There's been numerous introductions to CultureGrams - grade 9 S.S. students researching a South American country (love the comparison graphs!!!).
The ELM databases get better and more appealing, but there's no pizazz to them. Does reliability have to look so plain-Jane?
The Discovering Collection with the chemistry class and Urban Education class got a "Why didn't anyone ever tell us about this before?" and 'so much better than Google". Was that kid for real?
ProQuest Newstand results were international and useful on the topic of 'urban education' and 'achievement gap' and but it was hitting only foul balls with searches for elements in chem class.
EBSCO Host was phenomenal! Right-on the money in searches for concerns of acrylic nails (chem class research project and EBSCO has several cosmotology trade/scientific journals.)
How do you, dear reader, help students think about the complexity of reliable journals vs. Google search results? Should I bring in the Onion newspaper or a tabloid with a baby with two heads or the image of the Virgin Mary on the refrigerator to compare with the WashingtonPost? Election ads? It's a big move up into becoming thinking readers and it's media literacy, too. Who's the creator? What's the purpose? (Is it to entertain, pursuade, or inform.) Who's the audience?
3 comments:
Once again I am in awe. You inspire.
So good to see you were able to check these out -- thanks for the great snippets about them! I may be missing what you were looking for in Proquest, but I'm not surprised you got poor hits considering that it only contains newspapers and not magazines or journals. Yes, the ELM databases are pretty plain-jane, but Jen from Minitex will be showing us some "bells and whistles" at our next meeting, so hope you like it!
Hi Donna,
I'm reading all the blogs now rather than blogging - that's an education in itself! I need to read some so I know what to write. I do feel the same way you do, only magnified a zillion times. I just don't understand how anyone could possibly be interested in what I'm doing or have to say. Besides I'm just too tired from running back & forth to 2 schools which basically is 2 full time jobs for the price of one! Have a great Friday. Coreen still the media queen - well I'm basically treading water this year. (Florist's daughter)
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