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.

NPR Audio Clips Debut @ eLibrary Canada

Last week, our popular eLibrary Canada transcript feeds for National Public Radio (NPR) were updated to include audio for each segment! The June 1 edition of All Things Considered is the first show to include a new audio link.

Additional NPR programs will be populated with audio clips throughout June. After we have all the programs up and running, our content loading team will go back and add archive content.

Search, click, and sit back and listen to some of the best, most balanced news reporting available to U.S. citizens -- thanks to the hard work of National Public Radio and ProQuest!

BookCart Tool + May Upgrades =
Great News for Educators

Think of our eLibrary Canada BookCarts as digital lesson plans that support your teachers and students as they extend learning beyond the content (that may be obsolete) textbook and into the current world. You’ll find that our collection ProQuest model BookCarts have the following characteristics of effective traditional lesson plans:

1. Can be automatically correlated to provincial standards.
2. Include essential questions (EQ: in the Description box) to integrate critical thinking and differentiate student perspectives on the topic/issue.
3. Contains more than 35 editor selected articles, websites, and media to support student mini-research in-depth learning.
4. Provide the means to customize reading levels for the same topics to accommodate students reading at, below, or above level.
5. Provide current, historic, and primary sources that provide learning resources that are superior to those available through textbook learning alone.
6. Provide a means for students to search beyond BookCart resources especially for more current information but limited to using relevant teacher selected publications.
7. Provide a QuizCart tools to assess and auto-score up to 10 multiple choice content related questions.
8. Includes curriculum guides to help teachers manage and evaluate mini-research activities.

And now, our BookCart tool has been made even easier with the development of the new interface and tools that teachers and librarians will appreciate:

• Create folders to store sets of BookCarts for easy retrieval and use
• Use navigation tabs to find your personal, district, and copy some or all the more than 400 hundred ProQuest model BookCart collection
• Take advantage of our revised search tools to quickly find BookCarts in your local or ProQuest collection

Learn more about BookCarts at our all-new resource page--online.

ExploreLearning: Codie Award Winner

Last week, ProQuest announced that ExploreLearning.com was a winner of a Software and Information Industry Association's (SIIA) Codie Award. ExploreLearning won the software and information industry's highest honor for the "Best Instructional Solution: Science."

"We are honored that ExploreLearning has been recognized as the best instructional solution in science," says John Campbell, Senior Vice President of ProQuest Education. "We are proud that ExploreLearning helps thousands of students achieve in math and science by building lasting understanding."

The winners of the 21st Annual Codie Awards were honored at a black-tie gala on May 16 at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. This year’s winners were chosen from more than 1,025 nominations submitted by more than 500 companies, breaking the record for nominations set in the 2005 awards.

Established in 1986, the Codie Awards are the benchmark for celebrating the most innovative products in the software, digital content, and education technology industries. The Codie Awards program is the longest running and only peer recognition program in the software and information industry.

"This 21st Annual Codie Awards continues our tradition of celebrating the best products in the software and information industry." said Ken Wasch, President of SIIA. "Being a winner among so many fine nominees is a solid achievement. I congratulate all of the
companies."

ExploreLearning offers interactive online simulations that drive the inquiry process and conceptual understanding of math and science in grades 6-12. ExploreLearning helps students build lasting knowledge of complex mathematical and scientific principles through hands-on exploration, providing a powerful enhancement to the way teachers teach and students learn.

Discover everything ExploreLearning has to offer you and your school!

CultureGrams: World Conflicts Today Release

ProQuest is proud to announce the release of a new World Conflicts Today text and updates to the other nine conflicts that make up this in-depth resource. The new text treats the ongoing and resurgent conflict in Afghanistan---reviewed and highly recommended by war expert and eyewitness to the Afghanistan war, Dodge Billingsley.

World Conflicts Today is an online reference product and teaching tool for students and teachers and for use in high school and university libraries and classrooms. It explains and illustrates complex, ongoing world conflicts in clear and straightforward terms. The reports cater both to those who may just want an overview of a particular conflict and to those who need in-depth understanding.

The conflicts:

• Afghanistan (NEW!)
• Iraq
• Basque Country
• Palestinian Territories
• Northern Ireland
• Korean Peninsula
• Colombia
• Darfur
• Chechnya
• Jammu and Kashmir

The reports may be used across the curriculum for history, current events, and social studies research. Dive into CultureGrams and World Conflicts Today at our K-12 website.

Let’s face it--no matter how many times we visit our favorite online learning resources, we’re bound to miss a feature or two. This month, we present one of the least-known but most useful feature sets of your eLibrary subscription: Using the MyList feature to add readings to a BookCart.

One of the most powerful uses of our BookCart tool is to collect and store a list of eLibrary resources for use by learners. This month, we’ll show you how easy it can be to harvest a selection of readings and add them to a BooKCart for easy sharing.

First, in your browser, type the following web address to access the Teacher Edition for your subscription. You may be prompted to log into eLibrary at this point, depending upon how your administrator set-up access. If you don't know which version of eLibrary your school offers, ask your librarian or tech staff.

eLibrary Canada Teacher Edition
eLibrary Curriculum Edition (CE) Canada Teacher Edition
eLibrary Elementary Teacher Edition

Sixty years ago in a speech in Missouri, Britain's former Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, said "From Stettin in the Baltics, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent." Thus, Churchill put forth the concept that Europe had been divided and separated the democratic governments in Western Europe from Communist governments in the East.

Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech described the beginning of the separation of Eastern and Western Europe and the start of the Cold War. The Cold War ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The major events in that time period include as examples, the Berlin Wall, The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Polish “Solidarity” movement.

Assign students to research a major event from that era. Students will make a three-minute oral or PowerPoint report to the class to share their new knowledge and insight into the Cold War. These presentations should be scheduled in a timeline sequence. Presentations help develop essential communications skills required by state standards.

Use the following procedures to get the best learning resources from History Study Center, right inside your eLibrary Canada CE subscription:

• Click Browse Topic Tree > The United States of America, 1945-
• Note the variety of subtopics to choose from
• Click You are here: Home link to return to Browse Topic Tree
• Click European history > European history, 1945- > The Cold War
• Note the variety of resources available to choose from

1. Why did this event occur, and when and where?
2. How did Canada respond to this event? (or the United States or the Soviet Union)
3. How did this event affect Western Europe, Canada, the United States, and the Soviet Union?

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:

CultureGrams can help you broaden your students' understanding of the world and its peoples. Our World Edition includes 187 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 66 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:
New Zealand

• Capital City: Wellington
• Population: 3,993,817
• Area: 103,737 square miles (268,680 sq km)
• Real GDP per capita: $21,740
• Adult literacy rate: 99% (male), 99% (female)
• Infant mortality: 6 per 1,000 births
• Life expectancy: 76 (male), 81 (female)

• New Zealand’s indigenous name is Aotearoa (“Land of the Long White Cloud”).
• Two of three New Zealanders read a newspaper every day.
• New Zealand is the world's largest exporter of wool.