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Welcome to the December issue of our K-12 newsletter. This newsletter is designed to help teachers, librarians and administrators stay informed about the latest changes to your subscription, while providing classroom resources and giving tips for using your subscription in a variety of settings.

Don't miss our online archive (now available on proquestk12.com) for access to past issues, and to make changes to your newsletter options.

eLibrary® Canada & CE 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.

Here’s a brief rundown of the newest tweaks and system enhancements now online inside eLibrary, eLibrary Science, and our BookCart tool.

Pages of the Past and Canadian Heritage Customers

Very soon both of these products will be migrated to the ProQuest interface. Watch for an email that will alert you to all of the changes that will be happening with your product, coming in the next several weeks.

Don’t Miss a Single Teachable Moment:
Free Curriculum & Lesson Plans

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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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Classroom Activities

December is the fifteenth anniversary of the formal events that marked the end of the Soviet Union.

On December 8, 1991, the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian republics met in Belavezhskaya Pushcha to issue a declaration that the Soviet Union was dissolved and replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). President Gorbachev described this as a constitutional coup, but it soon became clear that the development could not be halted.

Twelve of the fifteen republics signed the European Energy Charter in the Hague on December 17, 1991, as if they were sovereign states, along with 28 other European countries, the European Community, and four non-European countries.

On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president of the USSR. By December 31, 1991, all official Soviet institutions had ceased operations as individual republics assumed the central government's role. The Soviet flag was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin.

History Study Center Activity: Use the essential questions below to guide your research report on the reasons for the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

  • In your opinion, what was the most important reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union?
  • What was the role of Gorbachev, perestroika and glasnost in the dissolution?
  • What was the immediate impact of the dissolution on politics and the economy?
Here is the Search procedure to get the best results: Click the History icon. Type “The collapse of the Soviet Union” in the Search box and select the Study Unit option

Assign students as many different essential questions on the topic as is practical. Techers should create others using those above as models. Different questions will yield different reports and presentations and help to reduce plagiarism.

ProQuest Learning: Literature Activity: Many famous Russian and Eastern Europeans authored books about the misuse of power during the Cold War years by the Soviet Unions leaders and the shortcomings of communism. This literature was banned in the Soviet Union until the 1980s. But it did help spark the decline and the reforms that ultimately resulted in the end of the Iron Curtain, the Cold War, and the ultimate formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in December of 1991.

Here are some of the authors that students should research and read to understand more about the Cold War and the evils of Communism. Your teacher may provide some others as well: Ilya Ehrenburg; Alexander Solzhenitsyn; Boris Pasternak; Abraham Tertz (real name, Andrei Sinyavsky); Nikolai Arzhak (real name, Yuli Daniel) and Ayn Rand.
  • Click the Literature icon
  • Click Authors on the top of your screen
  • You will get an alphabetic or individual search option
The following are examples of engaging questions that teachers can assign for mini-research to students for each author listed. Teachers may want to expand the list of authors and include additional essential question to those listed below.
  1. What are some of the works of this author?
  2. Did any of these works ever receive a literary award?
  3. What are the themes generally expressed by this author?
  4. How do these themes reflect on the life and culture of the author?
  5. How do these themes reveal the culture of the Cold War?
When teachers assign a different author to each student, the research can be shared with other students by using a three-minute oral presentation. This is also an excellent way to develop student essential skill in Language Arts and meet state standards.

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Training

Our trainer, Tasha Maddison, is standing by to help you get the most out of your subscription--and learn more about our other digital learning resources! She offers a wide variety of online training sessions (check our calendar of events) each month.

The 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. Click the button to sign up:



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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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