DISCUS: Kids InfoBits

Kids InfoBits is another great database for elementary students available through DISCUS. You access it the same way as you do SIRS Discoverer by going to http://www.scdiscus.org/ and either click on the database name or clicking on DISCUS Kids to get to the list of K-8 databases.

Kids Infobits is very kid graphic friendly and the easiest way for students to search is by clicking through the subject icons until they find the area they are searching for. This is great for teaching topic definition and keywords and well as broadening and narrowing a search in a kid-friendly, visual way.

Notice the tools circled - there are some fabulous teacher aides in the Teacher Toolbox for reseach projects and the dictionary is a very friendly version of the Merriam Webster's Elementary Dictionary.

Aside from the subject searching, you can also do a basic and advanced search to find something specific. I did a search for "Zebras" to demonstrate for this session.

Like SIRS Discoverer, InfoBits has tabs at the top to distinguish between types of information. (marked by the big arrow) There is also a student Backpack feature where students can keep a list of likely sources while they search. (marked by the star) There is a less sophisticated, but easy to follow reading level distinction with circles and triangles denoting "easy" and "more difficult" by articles. I also really like that some of the articles are available in PDF so that students can view them with full color photographs and charts. This is particularly helpful where budgets have been cut and students might not have ready access to learn the reading skills associated with reading in magazine and newspaper formats.

However, to me, two of the best feature comes when you look at the specific articles.

You have the option to email or print the article just like most of the other DISCUS databases (circled). But every article has ReadSpeaker connected so that students can listen to the article. Its not the best - its computer generated speaking - but it is a boon for students struggling with reading nonfiction texts for comprehension. You have the option of downloading the MP3 as well, so you can have the students listen while reading on email or with a printed version. This gives so MANY options for reinforcing reading skills!

I also like that at the bottom of most of the articles it has the full citation written out to help students get the citation information that they need. I've found that having students cite from databases is one of the hardest for them to learn (so they tend to do it the least!).

DISCUS: SIRS Discoverer

I love working with students and DISCUS... why... because the variations on the name are hilarious. I have lost count of the number of times I heard "Is that that DISCUSS thing?"

Now, following our progress, we've had Destiny Quest, we've talked a little about Nettrekker, what's DISCUS. More stuff for your students to plow through, you say? Well, every good teacher knows you start with a tool box and you try to fill it up with the best stuff. Then you pick the best tool for the situation and need. DISCUS is a big, multipurpose tool that we really need to share with our students.

DISCUS is provided free to citizens of South Carolina through the SC State Library and funded by the state. It provides 24/7 access to excellent reference sources for students and adults. Everything from encyclopedias, online reference books, periodicals, magazines, newspapers, government documents. It has a ton of stuff for you. The downside?? It has a ton of stuff for you and there isn't really a "Google" option for streamlining all that stuff. ; )

Because it is so huge, I am just going to concentrate on 2 databases that I love for elementary schools today: Kids Infobits and SIRS Discover. These databases are commercially available outside of DISCUS, but in SC we access them through the main discus website: http://www.scdiscus.org/. If you are at school, your IP address will be recognized and you should not have to enter a username and password. At home, you'll need the username and password which you can get from your local school or public librarian. In the upper right hand corner, it has a graphic and link for DISCUS Kids. That has a list of all of the databases most useful to K-8 students. Click there to get started.

There's a good basic breakdown of what each database offers and links to each, I'm going to start with SIRS Discoverer.

Click on the icon or link to enter the SIRS Discoverer database.

There is a tremendous amount of "stuff" just on the front page - you have access to the current almanac, encyclopedias, world maps, country facts, pathfinders, activities... just devote a little time to browse around and enjoy. It truly is like a treasure trove of fun stuff that is easy and safe for your students to access. Also note the SIRS websearch which makes a good back up to Nettrekker and easy to integrate if you are wanting students to stay on one site for an activity.

To demonstrate a search, I just did a simple keyword search on "Frederick Douglass." Look at the search results page - this is why I wanted to start with SIRS Discoverer. Look at the Lexile ranking option. Because we use Lexiles so frequently with the students, this is an easy way to target a general range to start reading. That way your students are getting frustrated with things to high or low (AGAIN... pick your instructional battles - it is what you are focusing on at the time!). There are color coded book icons to help readers distinguish between levels of difficulty and these are there for the websites as well! Also notice the tabs at the top; you can easily move between the types of information returned, so it is easy to sort newspapers, magazines, photos, websites and reference sources.

Now, look at an article from the search. The articles are full text and offer you (and your students) the chance to email the article. In our work to be more economically wise and eco-friendly, the less we print the better. This way you can use portions in your lesson plans, and students can work on the computer to take notes and organize research materials! You also have the option to print from here, AND I love the Source and Summary link with clear and concise information that the students need to cite the article and a brief summary. This would be great to have students summarize the article and then compare with the "official" summary. The link to subjects will take you to more articles like this one and results takes you back to your search screen. This particular article has fabulous features for teachers and offers vocabulary, pre-reading questions, comprehension questions and follow up enrichment exercises.

Nettrekker Refresher: Kids on the Internet : )

We love computers... and kids... and we especially love them together, right???!!!

Students can fool us when it comes to technology - they have such as high level of skill when it comes to being "tech-naturals," they adapt, they use prior computer and tech knowledge to quickly figure out new programs and swiftly navigate through the internet. HOWEVER, (and I don't say this to hang on to a shred of my tech intelligence around the students), they are NOT information savvy. They can jump out into the ocean - but can they swim well? Students need guidance to learn to navigate the information out there, and to be able to pull back exactly what they need. This is part critical reading skills, part information evaluation, and part source selection.

That's where Nettrekker and DISCUS come in. We've talked about Destiny Quest, which helped us search for print materials, Nettrekker gives us Internet resources, and DISCUS gives us quality electronic reference and periodical information.

Why Nettrekker? Well - the kids know Google, and they know search engines... how... someone told them and they told their friends. Type in whatever you want and get stuff... a lot of stuff... if you're lucky, you'll find something on the first two pages. Who could ask for more? Google has a lot to offer - don't get me wrong. Let's do a simple search on "civil war" - librarian friends, settle down, I KNOW this is a bad search, work with me.




Now, this is a bad search because there is more than one civil war and the search could have used much better key words. But, me, the lucky person thinking like a student just went with it.

What did I get? Link 1 - preservation society trying to save battlefields, Link 2 - for profit site with ads, authorship on non primary documents by unidentified "committee," Link 3 - Wikipedia (I'll save that heated argument), Link 4 - Wikipedia again, Link 5 - personal nonprofit site - no information on author's credibility without serious digging. I as the student didn't care, I copied pictures from the first page and copy/pasted information from the for profit site, then got everything else from Wikipedia... I'm done!!

Now, this is an excellent teachable moment with students to talk to them about web evaluation, selecting site, AND using all the cool tools that Google has built in for us savvy users. HOWEVER, do we use these tools ourselves regularly as teachers? Have you Googled something in the last month... I've lost count for my part. The point is, we need to break these skills down. They can't be taught in one shot, and they aren't all need at one time. Its the habit that needs to be built and habit is tied to purpose and repetition. SO... lets look at Civil War on Nettrekker...


For the classroom, for targeted searching this is much cleaner. There are easy ways to sort AND a lot of the junk has been cleared out ahead of time.

I can tell before I go to the site if there are pictures and I can find other sites like it just by following my blue link addiction.

Nettrekker is also much safer for the school and home environment for children. NOW, that said, there is no such thing as a completely SAFE search engine that still works the way you need it to? WHY? Because a computer program is running the selection. However, Nettrekker is far and away better than Google for returning safe searches. Remember, the site may be blocked, but the description isn't on the search returns!! So now, I as the student am searching in a safer environment, and my teacher can focus on my atrocious copy/paste habits and critical reading skills THIS time, and make me search savvy over time until I am the uber cyber wiz as I go off to college with my 21st century skills alive and kicking. (Cue success story music) The truth is, as teachers well know, that it is a process and continued practice and reinforcement will make it better. Echew the once a year "research projects" they don't stick!!

There is a full handout on using Nettrekker including its advanced features like the Read-Aloud, and specialized searches available at: http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/gcsd/depts/ets/its/docs/nettrekker.pdf

Overdrive Training

I have a pretty long step by step hand out for Overdrive. Overdrive is our district eBook and eAudio book database. We have the School Download library plus we have added some titles to our system in addition to the base collection as well. The handout can be downloaded from: http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/gcsd/depts/ets/its/docs/overdrivetraining.pdf - for copyright reasons I am not going to use screen captures of the program in this blog - but you can see screen captures in the handout as you participate in training. You can access our Overdrive library at http://greenville.lib.overdrive.com - Log in by finding your school and using your network username and password. OR - K-2 students have a library card number and an alternate login screen.

I LOVE audio books - we've been using these digitial audiobooks for awesome projects and reading reinforcements. There are several schools doing "Exercise Your Mind" type programs where students/teachers load the books onto MP3 players and the students listen to them while walking on the tracks for PE minutes (or inside in yucky weather). Then students can come inside for discussion groups and lessons on what they have read. The books have been listened to in small groups for literature circles and shared over teacher Promethean boards for supplements to class novel sets. They are wonderful!! Read the research from Janet Allen on "Plugged into Reading" and other works about how audiobooks can improve comprehension and fluency!!

The eBooks are incredible in the classroom. It is the natural progression from holding books up to share with the class, to using a document camera, to having an full screen image to interact with in the classroom or on an individual computer. POWERFUL! Most of you know one of my big professional interests is teaching non-fiction reading strategies to students. To be able to show the titles on the screen and guide students through the access strategies is incredible and to be able to have the students interact and post questions in Adobe Reader is the best!!

Destiny Quest Staff Training - Making a Public List (For Teachers or LMS)

One of the really nice features of Destiny Quest is being able to make a public list to share with parents or students. You can make a Top 10 pick for a grade level - recommendations for a poetry projects, or give supplemental titles for a unit of study. This will guide you through making a public list.

To add titles to the list - it is no different than creating a private list - you just have to set it up first. You are going to log in, then click on the button that says, "Exit Destiny Quest" in the upper right hand corner.

You'll be taken to the old interface and you will want to click on "Resource Lists" in the left hand column on the Catalog tab (you'll automatically be on this tab when you exit Destiny Quest). MAKE SURE YOU ARE LOGGED IN or you will not be able to make a public list.

Next, you will want to click on the "Add List". On the next screen, you want to fill in all of the information and click the check box if you want to make the list public. That means it will be seen by everyone who looks at the catalog for your school, including guests, so this would be available for parents or students at home as well if they have computer access. Once you've filled out the information, click "Save." Then you can get back into Destiny Quest and once you've added titles to your list, it will be available in the Resource Lists window. Have fun and try sharing your favorites with your students and community!

Destiny Quest Staff Training Part Two

Continuing with Destiny Quest...

1. Creating a personal list:

When you are logged onto Destiny Quest you have an active list on the right hand side. (it will show if you aren't logged in, but this is the "Guest" list) You can drag and drop search items into your list, or add them from the details screen on the title.

If you want to drag and drop, hover over the image of the title, click and drag the title over to the "My List" box. When you are over the box, release and drop the title. You'll get an animation of the title disappearing into your list.

If you are looking at the title details, you have a button in the upper right under the title status that will let you add the title to your list as well.

If the item is already in your list, you'll see a smiley face and it will say "In your list."

Once you have a list ready, it can be accessed from anywhere with internet access - all you have to do is log in to Destiny! Just click on the link "Titles" in the My List box and it will pull up your list.

You can also print the list, and one of the nice print options lets you print a bibliography in MLA format! Great for research papers and projects to help reinforce format! From the list screen, click on Print Options.

In the options screen, you can select the type of bibliography you want it to print, or you can select MLA format. Then click Print Preview to see the results and print if you need to.

Destiny Quest Staff Training

This section was specifically made for Duncan Chapel ES staff, but other Greenville County students and staff, feel free to jump right in!

Intro to Destiny Quest: Part One

Destiny Quest is the cool new interface to our online catalog system. The new interface has had a complete facelift and is much more user friendly to today's tech student. It's search features are closer to many of the major search engines online and it works nicely for a cross-training in both library searching and organization and online searching and information mining. PLUS - there are several fun web 2.0/interactive features available to teachers and students like book ratings and reviews, recommending books to other users, recommending books for purchase, and creating custom search lists.

1. Creating a Username and Password:

First, to access all of these interactive features you need a username and password to log in to Destiny Quest as you.

There is a link off of the school's website to the catalog, or you can open Internet Explorer and type "mediacenter" in the address bar. This brings up the list of schools for the district and you just need to pick your school. Destiny Quest will open - in the upper right hand corner, you'll need to click the link that says "Create Account."

In the window that comes up, enter your last name and library barcode number. If you don't have your number, ask your media specialist. When you have entered this information, click "Next."

In the next window, you'll need to enter your birthdate. Select it from the pull down menus, then click "Next."

In the final window, enter your custom username and password. For the sake of simplicity, make it the same as your network username and password. Once you have filled in all of the information, click "Save." This will save your information and autmatically log you in to the system. You should see "Hello" with your name in the upper right hand corner now.

2. Search features

To search in Destiny Quest, you just enter your search term in the box at the top/middle of the screen and press enter or click "GO."

As you type, you will see samples of recent searches at your location. This can be helpful if you or your student aren't quite sure how somthing is spelled. :)

The search results returned will be very general. To narrow your search, you'll use the orange "Narrow Your Search Box" on the left hand side of the screen.

To pull up these narrow menus, you'll need to "hover" over the search. This means move your cursor over the word, but don't click the mouse.

The menu will appear to the right of the word and you can select any of the available topics to narrow your search. For instance, in this case I tried narrowing by author. In the menu that appears I see all of the authors that have books in my original search for dogs. I can click on any authors names to see what books that author has about dogs.

Now look at the top light blue search history bar - I can see my orginal search for dogs and after I narrowed by author, I can see my author in the search as well. I can clear terms out of my search by using the X button to delete it and go back to my earlier search results. If I click the X next to dogs I can start my search over.

You can use this same narrow feature to narrow the search by Lexile, Reading Counts level or points, subject, genre, extent (if you want a book about dogs that is over or under a certain length), by year (if you want a new book - especially non fiction), by series and even by rating! For schools with foreign language collections, you can even search by language.

Let's look at the Lexile and Reading Counts narrow features. You can do a search just for Reading Counts or Lexile, but it is better to get students in the habit of realizing that they should look for a topic or author of interest, then try to narrow by the Lexile. Students are more likely to read what they are interested in and there are lots of books in the library with Lexile levels in the records.

Let's go back and look at the dogs search. If you hover over Lexile, you'll see the narrow box come up. Instead of a list, you'll see a slide bar to select the Lexile range you need. Move the bar on the right and left to select the range, then click "Apply." In this picture, we have dog books that are between a 400 and 500 Lexile range.

You can do the same thing with a Reading Counts search, but you can set the Reading Level and the Points Level in this type of search.

Now, lets take a look at the search results! One of the great new features is how easy it is for students to see if a book is checked in or if it is out when they are searching. In the upper right hand corner there is a little green "IN" if it is checked in, and if it is checked out they will see a little red "OUT."

You can use the same "hover" technique to scroll over the title and see the Quick Details on the book including the Call Number, Author, number of pages, Lexile and Reading Counts info and the start of a summary for the book. You can click on the cover or "More Info" in the Quick Details to see more.

From this screen you can view the full information on the title. There's the summary, call number, Quiz Info, Awards information and Reviews as well as the status in the upper right hand corner.

One fun feature to access from here is the auto-recommended titles based on author and subject matches. This is a nice, easy - "if you like this, try"

Another great feature to access from this screen that reinforces shelf order and organization is the Shelf Browse button. This brings up a Visual Shelf Browse so you can see what is immediately around the title on the shelf. You can use the slide bar on the bottom to continue browsing to the right or left of your title, and you can click on any of the titles to bring up more information on it.