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Enclosed is this month's free newsletter for ProQuest® Platinum subscribers. This newsletter is designed to help teachers, librarians, and administrators stay informed about the latest changes to their subscriptions, while providing classroom resources and giving tips for using their ProQuest solutions in a variety of settings.
Don't miss our online archive for access to past issues, and to make changes to your newsletter options.
PROQUEST EDUCATION SOLUTION UPDATES
Our product development team is constantly reviewing customer feedback and making changes to our learning resources to meet your needs. Several updates or content additions were recently completed, and we wanted to bring them to your attention.
Don’t Miss a Single Teachable Moment:
Free Curriculum & Lesson Plans
On the first of each month, our curriculum specialists deliver a powerful tool to thousands of K-12 teachers worldwide. And best of all, you can sign up to get this free, hands-on and classroom-ready content today at ProQuest.
Our monthly Teachable Moments email newsletter (December issue here) offers a treasure trove of innovative student activities that take full advantage of our complete line of K-12 learning solutions. Most can be easily augmented to fit into any classroom curriculum.
Sign up for Teachable Moments today using the box below, then browse our inventory of back issues. Consider it your own personal teachable moment with a professional development theme!
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PLATINUM CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
December is the month when many students celebrate a variety of multicultural holidays such as Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.
As our population gets more diverse, teachers have an obligation and an opportunity to help students understand and savor the best of the cultures that created and shaped the traditions associated with these holidays.
Students will enjoy researching these holidays and sharing information with the class.
ProQuest Metals Activity: Teachers will need to build categories for students to research. Some examples are history, music, food, customs in another country, dress, ceremonies, etc.
Teachers can assign a category to a team or students can work individually. Students will need to research four articles for their assigned category, two for Christmas and two for either Kwanzaa or Hanukkah and then compare and contrast them using at least three categories from the examples above. A three-minute oral report based on this research provides an opportunity for students to share the information with the class.
- Logon to Platinum and use the Basic Search.
- Type “Kwanzaa and holidays and special occasions” in the Search box...
- ...OR type “Hanukkah and history” in the Search Box.
- Use the Marked List tool to select the best articles for your category.
- Type “Christmas and history” in the Search box.
- Use the Marked List tool to select the best articles for your category.
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SIRS® DECADES: PRIMARY SOURCES IN YOUR CLASSROOM
The use of source documents offers students a direct glimpse into the past. But without context, these sources can confuse as often as illuminate.
SIRS Decades places these resources into a relevant framework for understanding that enriches both the content and student understanding of the material. SIRS Decades features more than 5,000 hand-selected primary and secondary source articles highlighting key events, movements, people, and places in 20th-century America.
Recently we completed a project to map all of our Document Based Questions (DBQs) with NCSS standards. You can connect to this critical information by clicking the State and National Standards Correlations link from the Decades homepage. It’s searchable, linkable and printable!
Find out more about SIRS Decades at our K-12 website.
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CULTUREGRAMS™ IN FOCUS
CultureGrams can help you broaden your students' understanding of the world and its peoples. Our World Edition includes 190+ country profiles, written for junior high students and older. CultureGrams also has a Kids Edition and a States Edition, geared for upper elementary students. These editions include kid-friendly profiles of 70+ countries and all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia.
CultureGrams goes beyond mere facts and figures to deliver an insider's perspective on daily life and culture, including the history, customs, and lifestyles of the world's people.
Country:
South Korea
- Capital: Seoul
- Population: 48,422,644 (rank=25)
- Area, sq. mi.: 38,023 (rank=106)
- Area, sq. km.: 98,480
- Real GDP per capita: $17,971
- Adult literacy rate: 99% (male); 99% (female)
- Infant mortality rate: 5 per 1,000 births
- Life expectancy: 73 (male); 81 (female)
Did You Know?
- Because of the Confucian emphasis on family hierarchies, Koreans keep detailed genealogies.
- In Korean wrestling matches, combatants hold on to pieces of cloth tied around their opponent's legs.
- To pass extremely competitive university entrance exams, students prepare intensively for months, often hiring private tutors.
Language
The Korean language is written in Hangul, a phonetic alphabet created in 1446 because classical Chinese (the only written language available) was difficult to master. Hangul made it possible for the commoner to read and write. It has 24 letters, 10 of which are vowels. Hangul also instilled a national pride in Koreans that helped them preserve their culture during periods of foreign occupation. The Seoul dialect is the standard taught in school. Korean used in South Korea mixes numerous Chinese characters with Hangul script in newspapers and government documents, but Korean is not closely related to Chinese.
Greetings
A common greeting between peers or for subordinates is Annyong haseyo? (Are you at peace?). Children often greet each other with a simple Annyong? To show respect for a social superior, one adds an honorific: Annyong hashimnikka? A Korean name typically consists of a one-syllable family name followed by a one- or two-syllable given name. Kim, Lee (Yi), and Park (Pak) are the most common family names. Women retain their maiden names when they marry.
Family
On a person's 60th birthday (a milestone rarely reached in the past), extended family members gather for a grand celebration (hwan'gap). Families may save money for months to pay for the event. Similar lavish attention is afforded to babies. After one hundred days of life, a small feast is held in honor of the child's survival to that point (also a date often not reached in the past). A much larger celebration (tol) is held at the first birthday. From the many gifts offered, what a child picks up first is thought to signal his or her fortunes in life.
Holidays
For the New Year (Jan. 1-3), families gather to exchange gifts, honor the dead, and enjoy large meals. People often dress in traditional clothing, though this is becoming less common in cities. After the memorial services, family members bow to each older person in a show of respect. Games are played and fortunes are told. South Koreans celebrate the Lunar New Year (January or February) by visiting hometowns or vacationing in resorts. The other major family holiday is Ch'usok (Harvest Moon Festival, held in September or October), when family members visit ancestral tombs to clean the grave site and leave food offerings in honor of the dead. Larger family reunions are common during this festival.
To find out more about CultureGrams, connect to our website today.
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EXPLORE OUR WORLD WITH CULTUREGRAMS
As world events increasingly affect all our lives, it’s more important than ever to educate students about the world around them. CultureGrams and World Conflicts Today show students how the world’s peoples live... and what’s behind the major conflicts they face.
CultureGrams concise, reliable, and up-to-date information delivers a true insider’s perspective on daily life and culture of the world’s people. Explore 190 country reports that include 25 cultural categories, maps, images, bios, glossaries, statistics, and five local recipes per country.
World Conflicts Today provides new ways to understand the high-profile conflicts currently engulfing many of the world’s nations. Unbiased overviews of the history, background, obstacles, and implications analyze each conflict, alongside primary and secondary sources, interactive maps, slide shows, and other multimedia.
Conflicts include Afghanistan, Basque Country, Chechnya, Colombia, Darfur, Iraq, Jammu & Kashmir, Korean Peninsula, Northern Ireland, and the Palestinian Territories.
Together you get more than facts and figures; you give students unbiased cultural and social insights they won’t find in any textbook, website, or encyclopedia.
Try both today, free for 30 days.
You can save 20% off World Conflicts with purchase of both* by 12/31/06.
And, with district purchases you may be eligible for up to 40% off CultureGrams!
* Existing CultureGrams Online subscribers are eligible
You’ll see why School Library Journal recommends CultureGrams for, “History, geography, foreign language, ESL, and current events teachers…[for] discussions, debates, presentations, research papers, reports, and reading and writing exercises.”
For more information, contact ProQuest toll-free at 1.800.521.0600, or by email at PQSales@il.proquest.com.
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TOP 3 WEBSITES
Each month, our SIRS® WebSelect and SIRS® Discoverer WebFind editorial teams scour the Internet for top-quality sites that help teachers teach and students learn. Although no Internet site can supplant a quality research database, these vetted resources offer unique resources that are sure to be of interest.
Biodiversity Hotspots
Organization: Conservation International (CI)
"Conservation International (CI) focuses its efforts on 25 biologically rich areas around the world under significant threat of destruction. The remaining natural habitat in these biodiversity hotspots amounts to just 1.4 percent of the land surface of the planet, yet supports nearly 60 percent of the world's plant, bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species." (CI) Explore the hotspots by region or the interactive map to access information about the ecosystem, unique biodiversity, human impacts, conservation action, and vital statistics.
Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment and Design
Organization: Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), Great Britain
"This exhibition is about how Leonardo da Vinci thought on paper. It contains some of his most complex and challenging designs. Although many other artists, inventors and scientists have brainstormed on paper, none of Leonardo's predecessors, contemporaries or successors used paper quite like he did. The intensity, variety and unpredictability of what happens on a single sheet are unparalleled." (V&A, GREAT BRITAIN) Visitors to this companion site to the V&A exhibit on da Vinci will need Macromedia Flash to view the incredible animated drawings of da Vinci's notebooks.
North Korea: Nuclear Standoff
Organization: Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
This special feature from the Web site of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer chronicles the threat of nuclear weapons in North Korea. Articles and interviews that explain the history and international politics in this region of the world are presented.
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FREE TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES
Our ProQuest product trainers are standing by to help you get the most out of your subscription--and learn more about our other digital learning resources! We offer a wide variety of online training sessions each month.
Plus, all attendees can easily obtain a Certificate of Attendance (right) for any of our online courses! The certificate documents the course name, amount of class time, date, and verifies attendance. You can use the certificate to document attendance in the class and submit it along with the additional documentation your school district requires to award you with continuing education credits.
Be sure to tell your trainer that you would like to receive a certificate via email at the start of each class. They’ll be glad to help!
You can download three ready-to-print versions of forthcoming training dates and times in PDF format.
Our training sessions cover after-school hours within several time zones. Best of all, there's no cost to participate. All you need is a computer with Internet access, a phone, and one hour.
Register for an ProQuest Platform (Platinum+) or additional ProQuest solution course today.
(Interested in Reading A-Z programs? Click here.)
You may also sign up for a timely enewsletter to receive training dates each month via email as soon as they're available.
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CALL FOR USER TESTIMONIALS
What features of Platinum do you and your students find the most useful? Have you recently used or are planning to use it as part of an assignment or student research project? How do you and other curriculum leaders in your institution use your ProQuest educational resources?
Share your experiences with peers working in schools across the country and around the world--through an upcoming Product News Bulletin! We're waiting to hear from you. Please send your ideas and stories to: tim.mclain@il.proquest.com
If we choose your submission, we'll contact you for additional information and permission to use your story in a future issue.
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FORWARD TO A COLLEAGUE + EMAIL SERVICE INFORMATION
Increase the usage of your digital learning resources! Our forward-to-a-friend service makes it easy to instantly send this product bulletin -- and all the great ideas and information it contains -- to others in your subscribing institution with a click of your mouse.
Also, be sure to encourage them to sign up for our SIRS, CultureGrams, ProQuest, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, eLibrary, eLibrary Curriculum Edition, and additional enewsletters as appropriate.
To change your email address, sign up for additional newsletter titles, or modify your subscription settings, click here.
Cordially,
Your ProQuest K-12 Team
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