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Enclosed is this month's free newsletter for eLibrary® 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.
Vocabulary A-Z Wins Coveted Award of Excellence
Technology & Learning's Awards of Excellence (AOE) program has been recognizing outstanding ed-tech curriculum products for 24 years.
We’re proud to announce that ProQuest LearningPage’s new Vocabulary A-Z learning solution has won a 2006 AOE! Take a moment to explore how Vocabulary A-Z can help you and your school generate thousands of custom vocabulary lessons, each with enough materials for weeks worth of instruction.
Try a free sample and subscribe today.
With a solid reputation in the industry as a longstanding, high-quality program, the AOE recognizes both "best of breed" and creative new offerings that help educators in the business of teaching, training, and managing with technology. All entries are given a rigorous test-driving by qualified educators in several rounds of judging, which takes place over several weeks at various computer labs in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Join us in congratulating the ProQuest LearningPage team for their hard work in bringing Vocabulary A-Z to life.
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ELIBRARY PODCAST + TIPS & TRICKS
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, our free video podcast focuses on one of the least-known but most useful feature sets of your eLibrary subscription: BookCarts.
Every day, our team gets dozens of questions and comments from eLibrary subscribers. One query we get often is this: “How can I use eLibrary to gather resources to create lesson plans OR provide learners with direct links to relevant information on a topic?”
This month, we’ll show you how to use eLibrary’s built-in BookCart tool to author resource link collections AND standards-aligned lesson plans. Teachers AND library staff, take note!
Best of all, we’ll use a simple technique that makes it easy to create a new BookCart in under 10 minutes. Welcome to this month’s eLibrary podcast from ProQuest.
First, as a teacher or library media staffer, you have access to our eLibrary Teacher Edition. The Teacher Edition is your link to the BookCart authoring tool.
To gain access, you’ll need to link to the version of the Teacher Edition that corresponds to your subscription.
For instance, the standard eLibrary Teacher Edition link is:
http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/teacher
If you get an alternate version of eLibrary – including Curriculum Edition, Select, Canada or Australasia – you can obtain the corresponding Teacher Edition link by reading our BookCart Quick Start Guide.
To access the guide, connect to proquestk12.com, click the Product Information tab, then click the BookCarts and QuizCarts link. You’ll find the link here in the upper right-hand corner.
Once you’ve accessed your version of the Teacher Edition, start by conducting searches to tag resources related to your lesson or reading list topic.
On the search results page, click the blue +’s to add relevant articles, images, and multimedia files to a fresh My List. This tool makes it easy to harvest connections to each resource, which can then be imported into a new BookCart.
Once you’re satisfied with the resources you’ve harvested, click the My List button at the top.
It’s time to make your BookCart! Click the Add to new bookcart link at the top. Your resources will be pasted into a fresh BookCart. Next, type a name of your new Cart, add any additional information you wish, then save it to your local collection. Students and library patrons can now access your subscription, click the Bookcart tab, and your new BookCart will appear on the Local tab.
Mission accomplished! You can learn more about BookCarts –- and how to use them to create pre- and post-assessment quizzes called QuizCarts -- at our K-12 website. Connect to www.proquestk12.com, click the Product Information tab, then click the BookCarts and QuizCarts link.
Now you’re in the know! We hope this month’s tip and trick bring you closer to being a true eLibrary power user. Be sure to sign up for our free video podcast (no iPod necessary!) to stay up-to-date.
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CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
October is Energy Management Month. The prices of gasoline, heating oil, and natural gas have escalated dramatically since Hurricane Katrina disrupted domestic supplies from the Gulf region.
Ruptured pipelines in Alaska plus Middle East conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon put added pressure on prices because of supply interruptions, both real and anticipated.
The increased demand for oil from emerging economic giants such as China and India provide additional forces for increased demand and higher prices. The price of oil translates into increased prices for plastics, transportation, fertilizers, chemicals, and heating/cooling our homes. The net effect of all this is to lower the standard of living of Americans and increase the income of Middle East dictatorships whose chief source of income is oil and who sponsor terrorism.
These continued price increases have spurred the public to demand action from Congress and the President. Usually this pressure results in a discussion of strategies for short-term solutions because they’re easier to sell and implement. But generally these solutions only postpone the inevitable -- more oil shortages and continued price increases.
Activity: ProQuest has created hundreds of BookCarts for all core academic subjects in K-12. Some of these can be used by students to research this topic.
Here are some titles that will support student activities: Alternative Energy and the Environment; Biofuels as Alternative Energy; Energy, Conservation, and the Environment; Fossil Fuels and Alternative Energy; Nuclear Fusion--Energy of the Future? Alaska Pipeline and Oil; OPEC and World Oil Supply; and The Future of Oil.
Each of these BookCarts has essential questions for critical thinking included as models for teachers to assign. These questions guide the students to use the resources effectively and creatively. Teachers should also create their own essential questions and can develop ideas from the end-of-chapter questions in
their textbooks.
Assign students to use different BookCarts but with the goal of providing and defending an effective energy strategy. Copy these BookCarts to your local collection for students to use:
- Logon to eLibrary Teacher Edition.
- Click the ProQuest Carts tab.
- Search for each title listed above.
- Click the Copy icon to the right of the title under the Actions column.
- Return to your local tab to view your new BookCart.
- Repeat the process for the other titles.
What are long-term solutions vs. short-term solutions? Who benefits and who loses in each of these long- and short-term strategies for solving the energy problem? What is the student’s solution to the problem and why will it work?
Students should select at least three different sources for their mini-research report. A two- to three-minute oral report provides an opportunity for students to learn from and debate each other. Oral reports also provide students with an opportunity to practice essential presentation and speaking skills that are required in state standards.
Bonus BookCart Activity: The new BookCart Editor makes it so much easier for teachers and librarians to create custom BookCarts to support a variety of mini-research activities. But the magic is not in the creation of new BookCarts, it’s about finding one or more of the 450 model BookCarts that already exist. These are ready for you to copy and adapt as digital lesson plans.
Here’s why these BookCarts are digital lesson plans and why the BookCarts/QuizCarts that you create in the future will also be your lesson plans:
- You can include both the academic content area standard AND the standard for language arts essential skills of the research process.
- You can include three or four Essential Questions for Critical Thinking to guide students and ensure that this research activity increases critical thinking and reduces plagiarism (you can adapt these from the end-of-chapter ideas in your textbook).
- You can select Publications that provide a guided search when students need the option of adding more current information to that already available in your BookCart.
- You can include a variety of articles with appropriate Lexile reading levels and six other media types including visual and multimedia for the visual learner.
- You can include websites either from eLibrary or your own favorites.
- You can include QuizCarts that assess factual knowledge of the Readings to prepare students for the mini-research project (these are scored and emailed to you).
You'll find BookCarts for all core curriculum areas and levels as well as BookCarts for teacher professional development. To find, view, and copy any or all of this special collection, use the following procedure:
- Logon to eLibrary or eLibrary CE Teacher Edition.
- Click the BookCart Admin link at the top.
- Click the ProQuest Carts tab.
- Click the folder of the subject area that you teach.
- Select the BookCart that interests you and click the Copy Icon under the Actions column.
- Go back to the Local tab to view the BookCart that you copied.
- Repeat the process for others that interest you.
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PROQUEST® PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: ELIBRARY & SIRS
Our professional development training program is a complete package that delivers the key processes to ensure successful program implementation, and the content to support ongoing use and customization across the entire curriculum.
The CEU-eligible program provides educators with research-based technology integration strategies and tools for customizing instruction and assessment using our eLibrary and SIRS online learning solutions. Schools receive the materials they need to build professional development and instructional models that can maximize teacher efficiency and effectiveness, and improve student achievement.
Educators receive rubrics, assessments, activities, and content designed to spur students' information literacy skills, critical thinking, and reading and writing abilities, while increasing their own technology usage. Plus, our flexible model ensures that all instructional staff in a school or system will benefit from the lessons learned.
Our fresh support for our line of SIRS solutions will train your teachers to fuse four types of literacy using SIRS resources with state and national learning standards. Find out more about this new program today--just in time for your spring training dates!
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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.
Primary source types include: Advertisements, Editorial Cartoons, Letters, Memos, Messages, Maps and Charts, Original Documents, Original Works of Art, Photographs, Poems and Literary Works, Posters, Published Articles, Speeches and Addresses. Users will be able to save time by exploring thousands of primary sources in one integrated, user-friendly resource. Students will also be able to use these primary source documents to understand how historical events affected politics, popular culture, and the media.
Here are links to several primary source documents. To access the material, sign up for a free trial, login, and then click on each link:
Find out more about SIRS Decades at our K-12 website.
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PROQUEST LEARNING PAGE RESOURCES
This month, Reading A-Z features books about Mexico's many wonders, the Hope Diamond, types of fungi, prehistoric trade, and the 1930s Dust Bowl crisis. We also have stories about a girl and her teacher, a hungry frog, a busy pond, and a mischievous mouse who dearly regrets a trick he plays on his teacher. A poetry book about mystery stories rounds out our September offerings.
See all of this month's new Reading A-Z materials.
And we're getting rave reviews on these recently added materials:
Comic Books: These funny little ditties will help emerging readers come out of their shells.
RAZ Pocketbooks: These cool, printable books are small enough to fit in a student's pocket!
Wordless Books: Students can retell stories in their own words and even write their own stories to match the pictures.
Reading A-Z has everything you need to expand your teaching tool kit and help you motivate young readers. Sign up today and enjoy a wealth of resources--all with just a click of your mouse.
For information on any of the ProQuest LearningPage websites -- Reading A-Z, Raz-Kids, Reading-Tutors, or Vocabulary A-Z -- please call 866.889.3729 or email razsupport@readinga-z.com.
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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 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:
Japan
Capital: Tokyo
Population: 127,417,244 (rank=10)
Area, sq. mi.: 145,882 (rank=60)
Area, sq. km.: 377,835
Real GDP per capita: $27,967
Adult literacy rate: 99% (male); 99% (female)
Infant mortality rate: 3 per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 78 (male); 85 (female)
Did You Know?
- Because body language is important, Japanese often expect others to sense their feelings without verbal communication.
- Most Japanese marriage ceremonies take place in hotels.
- Baseball is Japan's national sport.
Population
Japan is 99 percent ethnic Japanese, with a small number of Koreans (about 0.5 percent) and Chinese. The Ainu (an indigenous ethnic group whose habitation of Japan predates the migration of ethnic Japanese) live mostly on Hokkaido Island. All non-Japanese must register annually with the police and do not have full citizenship rights.
General Attitudes
Politeness is extremely important; a direct “no” is seldom given, but a phrase like “I will think about it” can mean “no.” Also out of politeness, a “yes” may be given quickly, even though it only means the person is listening or understands the speaker's request. The Japanese feel an obligation to return favors and gifts. They honor age and tradition. “Losing face,” or being shamed in public, is very undesirable. Gaman (enduring patience) is a respected trait that carries one through personal hardship.
Greetings
A bow is the traditional greeting between Japanese. Persons wishing to show respect or humility bow lower than the other person. The Japanese shake hands with Westerners. While some appreciate it when Westerners bow, others do not, especially when the two people are not acquainted. Therefore, a handshake is most appropriate for foreign visitors. The Japanese are formal, and titles are important in introductions. A family name is used with the suffix -san. Mr. Ogushi in North America is called Ogushi-san in Japan. The use of first names is reserved for family and friends. Between business representatives, the exchange of business cards (offered and accepted with both hands) most often accompanies a greeting.
Gestures
Japanese regard yawning in public as impolite. A person should sit up straight with both feet on the floor. Legs may be crossed at the knee or ankle, but placing an ankle over a knee is considered improper. One beckons by waving all fingers with the palm down. It is polite to point with the entire hand rather than the index finger. Shaking one hand from side to side with the palm forward means “no.” People refer to themselves by pointing an index finger at their nose. Laughter does not necessarily signify joy or amusement; it can also be a sign of embarrassment. Chewing gum in public is generally considered ill-mannered. One covers one's mouth when using a toothpick.
To find out more about CultureGrams, connect to our website today.
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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.
Mote Aquarium
Mote Marine Laboratory
"Mote Aquarium hosts nearly 400,000 visitors a year in Sarasota, Florida, where a variety of marine life--from the smallest critters to apex predators--are showcased. The aquarium's many exhibits are designed to highlight the marine research performed by the scientists at Mote Marine Laboratory." (MOTE MARINE LABORATORY) Learn about sea turtles, dolphins, manatees, and other marine animals!
Tudor Britain
The National Archives of the United Kingdom
“This website presents a selection of different types of historical evidence for students to examine, such as artifacts, inventories and wills, letters, maps and books. Students can examine these objects and consider how they were made, what they were for and who might have created or used them. They can discover facts about the Tudor period, see how evidence can be used to build up an historical picture, and think about what can be learned this way about the interests, values and preoccupations of people during Tudor times." (THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE UNITED KINGDOM)
Where Plants and Animals Live
Organization: Houghton Mifflin Company
"Where can you find plants and animals? A pond is one place. Think about the plants and animals that live in a pond. Remember that some of the animals might be hiding." (HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY) Find the plants and animals and click on them to learn more.
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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 eLibrary 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 eLibrary 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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