PROQUEST

I haven't really used Proquest much since college; I forgot how much I like it. I looked up some medical information and found a lot of articles I have never been able to find before; ranging from ultra-medical texts I could barely understand to articles in Glamour and Marie Claire. There are so many publications to pick from; I couldn't believe how many had to do with libraries! It was pretty easy to use. I like how you can choose full-text or just abstracts and that you can email the articles. This is definitely something I will recommend to more people.

SIRS Discoverer

I choose to look up information in SIRS about Apolo Ohno. I found a few articles, most were upper elementary level. There was at least one picture with most articles. I really like how you can sort by relebance, date or Lexile level. That would definitely make it easier for kids! I looked up Yemen in the Country Facts section. This was pretty cool. I liked the differendt graphic organizers that teachers could use. I like how they break up the information into sections (like government and history) instead of having a big report you have to search through for the right information. I also liked the maps, there were so many to choose from! You could use these so many ways. I looked at Spanish explorations 1513-1635. It had different colored trails for different explorers and show where Native American settlements were. It also showed a modern view of the states. It was pretty neat. I looked at the photo essays, too. I didn't like this as much. I was just expecting more pictures rather than just one picture and a short article. I thought it would be a series of photos used to tell about something. In SIRS Researcher, I looked at the pros and cons of homeschooling in the leading issues section. I liked how you can choose a topic, then it gets divided up into subtopics. The would make looking up information a lot easier for students.

World Book School Edition

I really enjoyed these, but my favorite is World Book Kids, it has so many fun things for kids! I looked up dolphins on World Book Kids and World Book Student. The difference was pretty much what I expected; longer, more in depth articles in the school edition and lots of pictures n the Kids edition. I really liked the article read aloud feature, even though it sounded strange. World Book Advanced was really cool too. I looked up Greece and there was so much that came up. I liked how on the left side you could chose just pictures or just history, etc. I also liked the print feature in the articles that you can print off each section individually. There was also links to other websites. I found World Book Discoverer pretty easy to use too. There were a lot of pictures again, which I think would make it easier for someone who is not English speaking or someone who needs differentiated instruction. I also thought the article translation feature, the article read aloud and the word definition features would be good. I also really liked the feature for teachers that brought up how the South Dakota Content Standards applied to a particular article, that was really neat.

end

Overall, I really liked this Challenge! I learned that a lot of things aren't as scary or hard as I thought and there is still so much left to learn. I think I'll keep using the RSS feeds and the ofice 2.0 the most; at least for work. They were both pretty helpful. I also really liked Flickr and Facebook, if I ever have free time to do that kind of thing. I really think this will help me to better help the patrons so I don't have to stare at them blankly when they ask about some of these things. This really helped me to not be so scared of trying new things out there on the net. I also learned that if you play around with things and they don't work or you change it, that is ok. that has always been a hard one for me.

wikis

I really liked this. I have always like Wikipedia but have been a little leary because I wasn't sure how accurate it was. I'll probably start using it more now. I really liked looking at the wikis that were on the list. I like how different people can add things. It would be neat to have a community wiki on the library site with different events and things.

Bookmarking

I did not find this all that helpful. I honestly don't think I would use it. Maybe if I worked from home sometimes, or had a laptop and a "regular" computer I would use the bookmarking.

facebook

I was surprised by how much I liked Facebook. I always thought I was too "old" to really like it; but it was really addicting to see pictures and stuff of people I haven't seen for years. It was pretty easy to set upn my account. It was also a lot easier than I thought to find people; sometimes if the picture they showed was not clear or was of a scene or something, I was not sure I had the right person. I did not like myspace very much. It just seemed kind of boring. I can see how people get really addicted to this! I could easily look at this everyday. It is scary to think of the creepy people out there though; you have to be so careful.