Databases
I created a Research page on my library website to make it easy for teachers and students to access our databases. The most popular databases at my school are PebbleGo, BrainPop (which includes the Junior edition, too), and World Book (Kids and Student).
PebbleGo is very kid-friendly, attractive, easy to use and has lots of articles that support the curriculum; the spoken-word audio is a great feature. We use "Animals" and "Biographies" the most, but also have "Earth and Space" and "Social Studies." This database is also great for English Language Learners, struggling readers, and the youngest grades. It's well worth the subscription cost.
I use BrainPopJr and BrainPop throughout the school and teachers love this database. The content is aligned with the curriculum and there are lots of interactive features, materials that support instruction, and plenty of humor in the animated video tutorials. I always begin the school year with the Internet Safety and Digital Etiquette lessons. Some of the lessons, such as the Internet Safety and Bullying are free so it's worth taking a look at the database even if you don't have a subscription.
I loved the Database Information Sheet created by Lisa Newton and am going to use it so I don't forget lose all the different logins! I'm a great believer in making bookmarks to give to faculty, students, and parents with useful information printed on them. I make new ones each year with a list of our databases and our remote access usernames and passwords and have a stash of them in the library to give away. I thought I'd also make some bookmarks with QR codes linked to our databases for easy access. I used the QR Stuff code generator because it's easy to use and has a URL shortener option so that you can make better QR codes from longer amounts of text.
PebbleGo is very kid-friendly, attractive, easy to use and has lots of articles that support the curriculum; the spoken-word audio is a great feature. We use "Animals" and "Biographies" the most, but also have "Earth and Space" and "Social Studies." This database is also great for English Language Learners, struggling readers, and the youngest grades. It's well worth the subscription cost.
I use BrainPopJr and BrainPop throughout the school and teachers love this database. The content is aligned with the curriculum and there are lots of interactive features, materials that support instruction, and plenty of humor in the animated video tutorials. I always begin the school year with the Internet Safety and Digital Etiquette lessons. Some of the lessons, such as the Internet Safety and Bullying are free so it's worth taking a look at the database even if you don't have a subscription.
I loved the Database Information Sheet created by Lisa Newton and am going to use it so I don't forget lose all the different logins! I'm a great believer in making bookmarks to give to faculty, students, and parents with useful information printed on them. I make new ones each year with a list of our databases and our remote access usernames and passwords and have a stash of them in the library to give away. I thought I'd also make some bookmarks with QR codes linked to our databases for easy access. I used the QR Stuff code generator because it's easy to use and has a URL shortener option so that you can make better QR codes from longer amounts of text.
pebblego_qr_code_bookmarks.docx |
Search Tools
When I was exploring the different search engines I thought this would also make a great activity for my students. So, I created an activity where students compared the functionality of three different search engines during their search for information. We had a culminating discussion when students voiced their opinions about which search engine they preferred; it was interesting to hear their preferences. The students compared Sweet Search, QuinturaKids and DibDabDoo. Overall, the students liked DibDabDoo the best and most students found QuinturaKids very confusing. I spent a lot of time exploring QuinturaKids and watched the tutorial, but still found it hard to get a useful list of results. I also explored SweetSearch4Me and KidRex, both of which were easy to use and produced great results. We have a subscription to NetTrekker but now I'm wondering whether we could do without the expense as I've now found free alternatives!
Subject Guide
Our 5th graders are studying the American civil war and so I experimented with Symbaloo to create a subject guide and I put a link to it on my library website. Creating a "webmix" for the students' civil war research was very easy but I created two different accounts - a regular account and an educator's premium account (one month free trial) - which caused me no end of confusion! In the future I'll stick to just one account. I couldn't work out how to change the default Google search box to a kid-friendly search widget so I contacted the Symbaloo tech support team. They changed the center tiles for me and now I have SweetSearch instead of Google.