Week 6: Business Resources

Ugh! Business Resources, really?
At first I thought this was going to be painful and boring, but...


My Discoveries for Business Source Complete...
1. What types of sources did I find when searching for information on FM radio?

2. Does the visual search option make searching easier or harder?


My Discoveries for EconLit...
1. What did I find when I searched for resources for small business owners?

2. What did I find when I searched for items that pertain to the EPA and small business?

3. What did I find when I searched for items that pertain to tax policy and small business?


My Discoveries for Regional Business News...
1. What did I find when I searched for a nationally known company? What types of results did I find?

2. What did I find when I searched for a company in this area of the country? What types of results did I find?

3. What did I find when I searched for a Maine company? What types of results did I find about the company or its industry?


My Discoveries for Value Line..
Here are my findings and observations...


My Discoveries for Wall Street Journal...
1. When I used the advance search feature, what articles on small business and healthcare did I find?

2. How were the results returned and what suggested limiters were offered by the site? What might small business owners (people) be interested in?

3. What options are available to follow up on my search (creating alerts, etc.)

Week 5: NoveList Plus

I am sooooo excited about this week's assignment. I think it is the most relevant assignment to my teaching job so far. I am actually looking for reading materials for my reading classes this week so it will be a wonderful tool to "help connect my readers with books they will love!"

Here is what I found out (Discovery Exercises)...
1. How does the use of the "view" component make my job connecting readers with books easier? I like the grid feature because you can see the covers of the books. If a student noticed a book but didn't remember the title, but knew it was about __________ (subject), the grid feature would work really well. The detailed feature is also nice for older students to for a quick summary. The Title Only and Brief are pretty similar and will be used for a quick reference.

2. How does using the Read-alikes from NoveList make my job easier and promote better customer service in your library (or classroom)? I think students will be more willing to try out another author that is similar, especially series readers that get hooked to one author or series and will not leave it and just keep rereading it over and over. Here they can find out the information themselves because sometimes the librarian or teacher is not familiar enough with the author they enjoy or they are not familiar with authors that are like the original author's style.

3. How does NoveList help increase the awareness of the collection (the librarian and I) have worked so hard to build for both new and older items. What are my take aways for this exercise? I love NoveList. I use Scholastic.com to find similar books and authors; however, it is really disappointing when we don't have the books. Here I can search the books we currently have access to. I also love the Teaching with Books feature and Looking for... Award Winners and Books to Movies. The recommends feature is also a plus! The Recommended Reads List that sorts books in subjects and genres is awesome. I always spend hours looking on Amazon. Google, and Barnes and Noble for lists  of books on specific topics.

I need to check out the folder feature and I don't really know how the star system works...

4. Check-in with other blogs... what did I find about the responses to Question #3?
Well, this was a bit difficult to do for several reasons...

• Some bloggers were so excited about this assignment that they really didn't separate their answers into the question/answer format so I had a hard time looking for the answers to Question #3 quickly or it was difficult to find the actual answers for the question.
• Some people are a little behind in their assignments (I certainly know how this feels!)
• Some bloggers didn't even deal with the questions in their posts; (I don't even think I answered the question completely due to my enthusiasm for this site and what it offers.)

That being said. This was my favorite assignment so far and the one that I can readily use to drive my instruction and increase student learning and engagement, especially around literacy. 

Week 4: Hobbies & Crafts Reference Center

Oh goody! Hobbies and Crafts! I am exciting to check this out... just in time for the holiday season!

Ok, ok, I don't have an addictive personality but... this site is addicting! I couldn't find the link so I just put it in the search box in MARVEL! I absolutely love the .pdf feature which makes for a easy read or print.

Here are the answers to the Discovery Exercises...
1. Does my library subscribe to any of the magazines titles listed? I am really not sure about this. I had to log in without choosing a specific library...

2. What projects would I like to download and try? I loved the Dreams project under Scrapbooking. I also looked under Calligraphy and found a Celtic Decoration project that I would also love to try- knotwork lettering!

3. What did I learn by browsing the online help guide? It is interested how the search features work. For example, if you enter a plural form of a word it also searches for its singular version and vice versa.

Week 3: Newspapers & Maine Newstand

First of all, unfortunately, I could not help any patrons find the information they needed using this resource or any others from the MARVEL resources so far... (I'm not a librarian- shhhhh!); however I hope that I can be a resource for my students and other staff members in the near future.

Second of all, I have really enjoyed looking at the variety of posts and blogs. Some are behind in their postings (like me!) and others are really going crazy. I am still working out the kinks of getting used to what I can and can't do with the blog and its design.

I got really frustrated with the searches- even the advanced features. I think my topic was very specific; however, I found information on Google about the topic and it was mostly newspaper articles so I was expecting some good results here.

So, here it goes...I went to First Friday in Portland to check out some art with friends. We ended up at Flatbreads to eat and had a great conversation with the bartender, who happened to be a musician. His wife died in a car accident, and she had been a teacher. I was interested his band and what had happened to his wife and searched for it in the Proquest database. I couldn't find anything about him, his band, or his wife except for the obit for her in the Boston Globe.

Week 2: Britannica Lesson 2a

The  Britannica Elementary provided a limited amount of information about my search topic... oh yeah... can you guess what it is?

You are soooo smart... It is the common wombat (thanks to the little hint in the title). Did you know that they live in hilly woodland areas in Australia? Yes, they actually do.

Anyway, there were also limited pictures. For more advanced students or older elementary students, I would suggest the Britannica Middle School Edition of the site. To change from the Elementary version of the Britannica site to the Middle School version, you actually click on the Britannica School Edition part of the heading (which I didn't know and got really frustrated and had to exit out of MARVEL! and yadda yadda yadda... maybe the students will be more intuitive than I was...)

The Middle School addition had more pictures to choose from and more detailed information. Did you also know that the common wombat also lives in Tasmania? The information in the Middle School edition was also more clumped together and did not have as many headings to help sort out the information, which could make it harder for younger students to find specific information. There were also more websites and articles available in the Middle School edition versus the Elementary edition. 

As expected, the High School edition is chock full of information. The side bar has Journals & Magazines, Primary Sources & E-books, the Web's Best Sites, and Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. I think the websites and the journals and magazines would be of greater interest to high school students. 

Students will find saving information in the Workspace by Project extremely helpful. They can access the information at home and school  or any where, so there will be no more excuses that they could not complete their research :) 

I think Britannica is one of the resources that students can utilize to learn more information about their topics of interest.

LESSON 1: #3 Think PLAY!

To get prepared to explore the resources in MARVEL!, check out the three short introductory tutorials on the Maine State Library website:

• Introduction to MARVEL!

• Navigating in MARVEL!

• Searching MARVEL!

WHAT HAVE I LEARNED?
Well, it is really nice to know that everyone who is a Maine resident has access to MARVEL!  I tried to use my USM account to login, but it didn't work... I know I use the card to check books out of the library so I don't know what was up with it but... I got frustrated. I just ended up logging in through registering. The tutorials were very informative, short, and to the point. However, I think they were too short, because I had to watch a hole bunch of them to get all the information that I needed.

THE SEARCH:
I then searched for Pandora... 

Your search for pandora returned 96,637 results

Ugh, it looks like I need to refine my search. Time to watch more tutorials or I can just experiment a little...

Hello Everyone!

I am very excited about the MARVELous Maine Invitational! I think it is exciting to learn new information and skills, especially dealing with technology, with other colleagues. This process is going to be a challenge for me personally because many of the topics and exercises are ones I am not fully familiar with; however, I feel they are important to my students’ engagement and learning.

"Life is either a daring adventure
or nothing at all."

- Helen Keller, The Open Door