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.
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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.
Training & Support Resources @ proquestk12.com
When it comes to online research, no one does it better than ProQuest CSA. In tens of thousands of libraries, classrooms, and homes, researchers of all ages rely on eLibrary, SIRS, CultureGrams, ProQuest, and CSA online solutions to find answers to the most pressing questions of the day.
This short video will help you tap into our growing collection of training resources to help learners of all ages make the most of their subscriptions. Let’s get started!
Whether your school provides access to eLibrary, SIRS Knowledge Source or Discoverer, ProQuest Historical Newspapers -- or any of our other 30-plus research and learning solutions -- your first stop for help should be proquestk12.com.
Our training resources are just a click away via the black Training & Support tab.
Plus, don’t miss our free monthly Web training sessions, which are eligible for CEU credit!
Reminder: One-Click Resource Linking
Students, educators, and librarians want full text, fast. They don't know or care which of your resources it comes from –- as long as a single click takes them there. The challenge lies in screening the links and showing only those for which your collection can provide the full text.
As always, ProQuest CSA is first with the solution -- One Click searching. This innovation (accessible within the new ProQuest Resource Linking feature) eliminates the frustration of multiple and/or dead-end links -– something serious researchers often complain about.
Here's how we did it. First we built a direct path between search results and full text. We systematically validate links from our award-winning abstracting and indexing to the full text in your electronic holdings. When users enter their search terms, the interface first identifies relevant results. It determines whether your ProQuest databases provide full text for each item, and then it determines whether your other electronic resources provide access to the full text.
If your holdings do include it, this is clearly marked on the Search Results screen and actively linked to the full text, no matter where it resides in your library's electronic collection. With a single click, users get exactly what they want. Eliminated are the blind links that may or may not resolve to full text. This new service provides links to your popular databases at no additional cost.
Don't miss this important new feature. You'll need to enable one-click linking from your LAD account, and then select the products you own from a pre-set list. These are the databases that we recognize as part of our one-click linking resources. For additional information, read our resource flyer, or call us at 1.800.521.0600, EXT. 7113.
The celebration of Women’s History Month in March recognizes the past and ongoing struggle by women in the U.S. for gender equity and civil rights.
Social Studies teachers should take this opportunity to help students understand that the rights that women enjoy today were vastly different than those they had less than 100 years ago. They should also understand that the struggle for rights is not over for American women and what new ground must be broken to achieve true gender equity.
As students grow up in an increasingly global world, women in other countries are empowered by what they see on TV, the Internet, and read in books to gain the same rights as American women. You’ve come a long way, lady, but there’s still quite a distance to go.
Easy access to the following topics will help students and teachers get the best articles for their Women’s History Month mini-research projects:
Click the Topic Guide tab.
Type “Women’s rights” in the Find Term box.
Click Find Term button.
Nine subject areas will be listed for students to use.
Click View Articles to explore these topics and articles.
Click Marked List to collect the best articles for your report.
Every student research activity should be guided by Essential Questions for critical thinking. These questions ensure that students must do more than hunt for facts, but instead use analysis and synthesis to express original thought and conclusions. Here are some examples for teachers to use and also help them to create more:
What are the major factors that have contributed to gender inequity for women?
Why have these inequities persisted over time?
How have women in the U. S. and the world overcome many of these inequities?
How can American women (and men) help women in other countries to make progress in rights and equity?
CultureGrams can help you broaden your students' understanding of the world and its peoples. The World Edition includes 190+ country profiles, written for junior high students and older. CultureGrams also has a Kids Edition, Provinces Edition, and a States Edition, geared for upper elementary students. These editions include kid-friendly profiles of 70+ countries, all 50 states (including Washington, D.C.), and the Canadian provinces.
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.
Capital: Stockholm
Population: 9,001,774 (rank=84)
Area, sq. mi.: 173,732 (rank=54)
Area, sq. km.: 449,964
Real GDP per capita: $26,750
Adult literacy rate: 99% (male); 99% (female)
Infant mortality rate: 3 per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 78 (male); 82 (female)
Did You Know?
More than 80 percent of Swedes live in the southern third of the country.
Swedes usually address each other by first name; they use titles only in very formal situations.
With the exception of the Nobel Peace Prize, Sweden awards the Nobel Prizes each year.
Population
At least 85 percent of the people are ethnic Swede. Finns compose about five percent of the population; most of them are immigrants from Finland, but some are native to northern Sweden. A small indigenous minority (up to 20,000 people), the Sami (pronounced “SAW-me”), lives in the north. Traditionally, they herded reindeer for a living. While some continue that occupation, most are involved in other fields. The Sami are sometimes called Lapps, but this is a derogatory term and therefore not encouraged in Sweden.
Language
Swedes speak Swedish -- a Germanic language that is closely related to Danish and Norwegian, and more distantly related to Icelandic. It developed from Old Norse, the language of the Vikings. Swedish emerged as a distinct language around the 10th century, but speakers of Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian can still understand each other.
Religion
Sweden, like most of Europe, is a highly secular society. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitution. Most Swedes (about 80 percent) are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church but rarely attend church services. The Lutheran Church still enjoys limited support from the state; however, a complete legal separation of church and state took place in 2000. Now all church decisions are made by church leaders rather than the government.
General Attitudes
Sweden has created an egalitarian society in which men and women enjoy equal access to opportunities for personal advancement. In addition, Swedes highly value their extensive social welfare system, which provides for most of the population's health, education, and retirement benefits. While public sentiment in the early 1990s led to some cuts in the system, most people oppose deep changes in what are called “cradle-to-grave” benefits.
To find out more about CultureGrams, connect to our website today.
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.
"Discover women who have made a difference." (SCHOLASTIC INC.) Learn about amazing women in history, explore women's suffrage, take a women's history quiz and more in this site that celebrates women's achievements.
"James Arthur Wood, Jr., began collecting original cartoon art as a childhood hobby....The Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature contains more than 36,000 original cartoon drawings and is a jewel among the Library's special collections, illuminating his astounding lifetime legacy of American creativity." (LOC) View 102 drawings from the collection. The cartoons are divided into the following sections: Illustration, Political Illustrations, Caricature, Animation, Gag & Single Panel, Cartoons, and Comic Strips.
This is "the story of the colorful individuals, startling ideas and ingenious tools that brought us knowledge of the vast and strange universe we inhabit." (CENTER FOR HISTORY OF PHYSICS, AIP) Discover the ideas and tools of cosmology, beginning with the ancient Greeks to the present.
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.
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.
FORWARD TO A COLLEAGUE + EMAIL SERVICE INFORMATION
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ProQuest offers a growing family of K-12 classroom-focused,
subscription-based online research tools. Many of these education solutions offer reading level-linked
(lexile) content, support
21st-century information
literacy skills, and help schools differentiate instruction across all curriculum areas.
Learn more about all of our tools here, tap into our training resources and videos, and don't miss our new eLibrary research tool (more). We also have a pair of special resource pages just for teachers (with lesson plans) and librarians.
The celebration of Women’s History Month in March recognizes the past and ongoing struggle by women in the U.S. for gender equity and civil rights.
