SIRS Discoverer/Issues Researcher

As directed I looked up armadillos and was impressed with the number of articles. They were spread out throughout time, not all from this year or any year particularly. I clicked on the first resource and found that it was written in British english (armoured) and had a picture with a page full of information - looked to be pretty good stuff if you were doing a report on armadillos. It was very like the World Book database including citations. The one thing I did notice in clicking on some of the subsequent articles was that there weren't very many pictures. Even in the magazine articles from places like Ranger Rick, the text was included without the pictures. I would think that this might make this resource less appealiong than World Book for younger children. The good thing was that it had so many different resources, super for older students doing reports

Under database features I selected Italy like I did in World Book so I could compare the two databases. The information was nicely organized almost like bullets, then there was a section organized by date. Pretty handy resource if you are looking for facts. I loved the graphic organizers! As for the map section, the maps seemed to be decent. They might be used to illustrate a report or clarify information.

I chose fiction fort the last area and was pleased to find stories! Fun! I also couldn't resist taking a peek at educator resources and found some potentially useful forms/ideas.

Under Issues Researcher I chose banned books. The format seems to be a short summary of the issue, pro and con statement with three supporting articles per side, there were questions for critical thinking, and additional resources with a nice research guide. Everything seemed to be updated and current. The only complaint I had was that the video didn't load properly and wouldn't play. The research tools were pretty neat, included a wealth of newspaper/magazines/graphics. The timeline was a nice touch, could help to organize information. I thought that this site provided many, varied resources that would be perfect for a mid-high school student doing a research paper. One could find enough pertinent resources/articles to do a whole paper.

The course subjects were quite comprehensive including math, science, social studies, Language arts, fine arts, and health. They appeared to be broken down into subsets that could be used to narrow focus. By selecting a subset, you were given a series of articles pertaining to the subject. I also clicked on a word in the graphic and it took me to the leading issues pages complete with pro/con.