Week #4 - Hobbies and Crafts

I decided to start my search by looking for some Swedish afghan or huck weaving patterns. I was introduced to this weaving last year and was immediately hooked. I first looked up Swedish afghan and realized my search term wasn't specific enough. The articles I located were about afghan dogs! I then entered Swedish weaving patterns and again didn't have much luck. I decided to search using another term, monk's cloth weaving, and was thrilled at what I found. I have had to buy entire books for just one pattern and never thought about using this database. What a find!!! Unfortunately our libraries don't subscribe to any of the magazines listed so I will have to check the local public libraries at some point.

On the results page under projects I was again pleased with the patterns available. I am not sure what project I will start next but I am sure that it will come from this search.

At the "Help" link on the right of the page I decided to learn how to save my searches for a later date. I quickly learned that I needed to create an account on the Hobbies and Crafts Reference Center before I could save any patterns. I did find a pattern that caught my eye and was able to save it to my folder. When I have some extra time my plan is to return to my folder and get ready to weave another project!

So much to explore, so little time!!

  Week 3 Newspapers and Maine Newsstand

 I decided to do a search on earthquakes in Maine because of the one we had the other day. I was able to find articles from all over the state.  There were thousands of articles available to read! Maine Newsstand brought up almost 2,000 articles while ProQuest offered 5800 articles. I like the graph feature to the right that allows you to narrow your search to specific years, months and even days of the month. I also created an alert to my email, not that I am expecting another earthquake, but I did want to see if I could figure it out.  I probably should have created an alert with another subject because I don’t think I will be seeing any activity with the subject I chose. I will save that for another day. :)

The tutorial “Maine Resources in Marvel” was very helpful. I intend to take some time to explore the Maine Memory Network and the Windows on Maine.

I spent some time reading other’s posts and was so impressed with all the information available. I learned additional information from other posts that I hadn’t discovered myself. Thanks everyone!

I have not been able to use this resource myself with students but I know that the teachers are planning to utilize it in their classrooms. Such a valuable resource!

Lesson 2a - Britannica School Edition

The mammal that I chose for this assignment was the dolphin. The Elementary School Edition offered basic facts and was easy to navigate with great pictures available. This site was very user friendly. I like the Explore Topics links because it lists many different suggestions if you are having a hard time deciding on a topic to research.

The Middle School Edition, as I expected, offered more detailed information.  It actually expanded on my “dolphin” search to include articles about the Miami Dolphins football team and some of their older players. I think the subject search would have to be more specific, maybe dolphin mammal, in order to eliminate the football information.  The Additional Content link to the right offered many useful options in both the Elementary and Middle School Editions.

I searched the High School Edition for the country of Albania and was amazed at the information available on this site. There were links to maps, Quick Facts if you just need some basic information, magazine articles and so much more.  Journals and magazines offer current daily information about what may be happening in the country you are researching. You can even hear the country’s National Anthem. I think that the ability to site pages for bibliography information is very helpful. Endless possibilities!

The Workspace link would be extremely helpful for both teachers and students. Teachers would be able to set up a workspace and add information that they would normally have to hand out to the students in paper form. The Workspace would help students with their organizational skills as well. Students sometimes get overwhelmed when they have to sort through pages of information. This option would allow them to save materials to go through at a later date and decide what is useful and what they don't need.  For those students that have trouble keeping track of their papers the w

Workspace would be very valuable. The possibility to view other sites without the fear of losing information is perfect for those that tend to hit the wrong key and delete everything they just typed.  This is a great link!

There is no time in my workday to explore MARVEL so this will be a great opportunity to become more familiar with it.  I mainly use NoveList and realize that it is just the tip of the iceberg. The tutorials were great, very informative! I am ready to go!