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Enclosed is this month's free newsletter for SIRS Discoverer® 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 SIRS solutions in a variety of settings.
Check out our online archive for access to past issues.
WHAT'S NEW @ SIRS
Our product development team is constantly reviewing customer feedback and making changes to our learning resources to meet your needs. Several updates to our SIRS family of products were recently completed and we wanted to bring them to your
attention.
SIRS Podcast
When it comes to online research, our SIRS family of resources is truly second to none. Our editors work hard to provide access to only quality, hand-picked resources, and more.
In your rush to use our solutions for research, you and your students are likely missing out on some very popular, content-rich database features that are just a click away.
In this month’s SIRS podcast, we’ll take a look at five resources you may have overlooked in the past – That’s Debatable Poll, Today’s News, Maps, Focus on Terrorism and our all-new Spotlights page. Let’s get started...
To view this month's video, subscribe to a ProQuest CSA podcast channel today. Plus, don’t miss our free monthly Web training sessions, which are eligible for CEU credit!
Current Events
Our editorial team updates our SIRS products every day with new articles and resources.
Here's a short list of the timeliest and most topical articles added to your product this month. Publication dates may vary due to the editorial selection process.
Charts & Graphs Feature
Did you know that Discoverer offers charts and graph activities, geared for the younger researcher?
Students can learn how to read and decipher charts and graphs. Visit our new Activities category in the Database Features, “charts & graphs.”
SIRS Newsletter Upgrades: August Relaunch
Over the past few months, our content and design teams have been working tirelessly to update our monthly newsletters. The result: all-new designs, new titles covering history and elementary topics, and more!
1. New, easier-to-read designs -- Next school year, all-new versions of our newsletters will arrive in your emailbox.
The new versions are designed to be a smaller, more concise, and easier to read, with clear links to “the full story.” That means much less searching, reading, and scrolling. We’ve also separated the solution-specific information from our generic content and other items to save you time.
2. Less email -- Each newsletter will only be sent 3-4 times during the year, instead of the current monthly cycle. Plus, SIRS ChallengeQuests and SIRS Spotlights will now be offered inside ProQuest Teachable Moments -- another step towards reducing the total number of messages you may receive.
3. New newsletters -- Interested in history or elementary-focused content?
Our new History Happenings and Explorations newsletters make it easy to tap into our history (Historical Newspapers, History Study Center, SIRS Decades, World Conflicts Today) and elementary-level solutions (eLibrary Elementary, SIRS Discoverer).
4. State-specific versions -- Instead of signing up for several newsletters that cover the two or more state-wide ProQuest CSA solutions you may currently receive, we’re offering a slate of state-specific newsletters that cover them all in a single message. This will also reduce the amount of emails you receive from us, while increasing the relevance and usability of each issue.
The state newsletters being developed currently cover Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Utah. More states will be added in the coming months based on how these initial offerings fare.
5. Fresh content and updates -- We’re also working hard to shake up our content offerings to ensure the usefulness and applicability of every article.
Don’t miss out! Connect to our newsletters subscription page and update your profile to add our fresh slate of newsletters which debut in August. To see the full list of newsletters and sign up someone who’s new to our newsletters, connect to this page.
Have a question, idea, or concern? Let us know by sending a message to tim.mclain@il.proquest.com today.
Political Cartoons in Discoverer
Discoverer now offers political cartoons geared for the younger researcher, from noteworthy sources including Junior Scholastic, Scholastic News, New York Times Upfront and Current Events.
Students can learn how to read and decipher political cartoons, as well as understand the writing devices employed in them (satire, irony, metaphor, etc.). In a hurry? The quickest route to all of our political cartoons is Database Features, Activities, Editorial Cartoons.
Here's just a few timely examples to get you started:
Map Activities in Discoverer
Travel -- with Discoverer! We provide map activities geared for the younger researcher, from noteworthy sources including Scholastic News, Junior Scholastic, and Current Events.
With these new resources, your young students will learn how to read and decipher varied types of maps, and answer discussion
questions based on their observations.
Visit a sampling of the following articles to learn more:
Suggested Research Topics
Tens of thousands of students mine SIRS resources for the latest information on the leading issues of the day. To provide the most pertinent and safe content, SIRS Editors carefully research topics and issues each day to find age-appropriate materials that bring students to a better understanding of the topics taught in schools and classrooms across the U.S. and Canada.
Be sure to take a peek at some of SIRS Discoverer’s most searched topics and issues over the past 60 days, including:
Global Warming
Dogs
Smoking
School Uniforms
Holocaust
Rosa Parks
Child Abuse
Abortion
Cats
Bullying
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SIRS WEB TRAINING: ONLINE
Our 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 for continuing education credits.
Be sure to tell your trainer you’d 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 a SIRS or additional ProQuest CSA solution course today!
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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DISCOVERER CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
What discoveries are helping to extend the span and quality of life?
May is Older Americans Month. Students in grades 3-8 typically have grandparents who are in their 60s and may be experiencing many of the signs and effects of aging.
In many cases, older Americans use health information from the Internet to improve their health through better nutrition, more exercise, and greater awareness of unhealthy practices that can interfere with the length and quality of life.
Activity: Students do want to know more about the health of their grandparents, aging, and their quality of life issues. Click Health & Human Body icon in the Browse Subject Tree, then Aging in the Subtopics list.
You'll discover a list of more than 60 articles for students to use to write a report on aging. Articles are coded by color to indicate editor-determined reading levels.
A new tool for teachers and students to use is the Lexile reading score, which scientifically measures the reading difficulty of each article. Lexiles have become increasingly popular and many standardized tests and many states have adopted this tool to help teachers customize learning resources for their students. Teachers should assign a color code or a Lexile score range for students to use for browsing these articles based on whether they're reading at, above, or below grade level.
You will want to assign reports that focus on a variety of issues that are related to aging and are contained within these articles. Assign each student a different issue for their report: for example, diseases affecting mostly older Americans, life expectancy, physical fitness activities, nutrition, medication, health care, etc. Students should be able to create a summary of about 150 words from two articles or websites.
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CULTUREGRAMS™ IN FOCUS
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: Rome
- Population: 58,103,033 (rank=22)
- Area, sq. mi.: 116,305 (rank=69)
- Area, sq. km.: 301,230
- Real GDP per capita: $27,119
- Adult literacy rate: 99% (male); 99% (female)
- Infant mortality rate: 4 per 1,000 births
- Life expectancy: 77 (male); 83 (female)
Did You Know?
- In Italy, pulling down the lower eyelid with a finger is a way of acknowledging someone's cleverness.
- Italians refer to one another by their city of origin (Milanese, Roman, Florentine, etc.).
- Nearly every city and town honors the local patron saint with an annual celebration.
Population
There is increasing concern about the country's birthrate, one of the lowest in Europe, because Italy's population is expected to decline significantly in the coming decades. Around 67 percent of Italians live in urban areas. Rome is the capital and the largest city, with more than 2.5 million people. Most of the country's inhabitants are ethnic Italians, but there are small groups of ethnic Germans, French, and Slovenes, as well as Albanian-Italians and Greek-Italians. Although Italy historically has lost many citizens to emigration, the nation has experienced a large influx of immigrants in the last two decades.
Language
Italian is the official language, although dialects differ from city to city. The Florentine and Roman dialects had a major influence on modern Italian. Most youths also speak English, the most common second language; older generations prefer to speak French. Significant French-, German-, and Slovene-speaking minorities exist. An ethnic minority in Tyrol speaks Ladin, a Romance language native to northern Italy.
General Attitudes
Adopting practices of their German and Austrian neighbors, people in the industrialized north traditionally value punctuality, reliability, organization, and economic success. They often are less relaxed and view time as a resource not to be wasted. They take pride in having a low tolerance for criminality and public corruption. Southerners are appreciated for their warm character and friendliness. They enjoy a leisurely life and take their time doing business. Family values prevail in the south and are often more appreciated than economic success.
Personal Appearance
Italians take pride in their appearance and tend to dress up for occasions as common as an evening stroll or a casual visit. Italians seldom wear dirty, worn, or sloppy clothing. Although attitudes vary among the younger generation, many people base their opinions of others on how they dress. In many cities, clothing and shoe shops are more plentiful than bakeries. Italy is a major center of the European fashion industry. Youths throughout the country follow the latest fashion trends, often wearing expensive, brand-name clothing.
To find out more about CultureGrams, connect to our website today.
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TOP 3 WEBSITES
Each month, our SKS WebSelect™ and 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.
Plants in Motion
Organization: Indiana University
"With few exceptions, plants grow and change on a time scale that is too slow for us to observe in real time. Time-lapse photography is a simple technique that allows us to see the movements of plants and clearly demonstrates that plants are living and capable of some extraordinary things. This is done by capturing a series of images at intervals ranging from minutes to hours apart." (INDIANA UNIVERSITY) This site features movies demonstrating the movements of plants accompanied by short essays about the growth and movement of plants. The movies require the QuickTime Player.
Sounds of China PodPage
Organization: ArtsEdge, The Kennedy Center
"In this audio series we explore unique aspects of Chinese music through sounds, performance and interviews. Users can listen online, download individual files, or subscribe to the Podcast....In this series, you will hear three episodes that each explores a different aspect of Chinese music--the endangered music of the Yunnan peoples; the traditional sounds of the pipa, bamboo flute, qin and other Chinese instruments; and the creative space between them, where sounds ancient and avant-garde intersect." (ARTSEDGE, THE KENNEDY CENTER)
To Market, To Market
Organization: SCORE History/Social Science
"If you were among the first colonists to settle in the new land and you needed a pair of shoes, a hat, or a bed, you probably traded with your neighbor. During those early years, if you needed something, you traded your skills for the skills or products of another. In this Virtual Museum, learn about how people earned a living, what they traded with England, and how stores began. Recreate a Colonial Town Square where you are the trades person." (SCORE HISTORY/SOCIAL SCIENCE)
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CALL FOR USER TESTIMONIALS
“My teachers, students and I continue to be very pleased with our ProQuest database. One of the best search results I've had in the last year is a student in a biology class that was researching avian flu around the world."
"Each pair of students had a particular country to investigate. The example I use when explaining to parents, school board members, legislators and others how useful this tool is, is the students whose country was Romania. I always show the students how to use the advanced search screen, telling them what a sophisticated search strategy they're learning. These students put in Avian flu and Romania, connecting their terms with AND. They got 12 results, all of them trustworthy, reliable, etc. Number one on the list was a story less than 24 hours old from the BBC. Such a source would never have been available in the days of Readers' Guide!”
Ellie Goldstein-Erickson
Library Media Teacher
Berkeley High School Library
Have you recently used or are you planning to use SIRS as part of an assignment or student research project? How do you and other curriculum leaders in your institution use your ProQuest CSA 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 CSA Team
Your SIRS license agreement gives us permission to send you email about product upgrades, special offers, and new services. If you'd like to discontinue receiving these messages, you may unsubscribe. If you have any questions or are having difficulty, please send email to Tim McLain. Thanks for your interest in SIRS and ProQuest CSA!
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