Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Here goes---After being on the World Book sites for two hours last night, and then attempting to get into my blog from home and not being able to figure it out, I'm here putting the first blog note on my site since I started this.



1) The world cat for kids was easy to get around in and also to find things easily. My animal was the manatee(I picked this as I had went snorkling in Florida looking for one of these and never did see one) and the picture was wonderful.

Manatees are large water animals. A manatee has gray skin with bristly hairs. Its front legs are shaped like paddles, and its tail is rounded. It has no back legs. Manatees grow up to 13 feet (4 meters) long. The manatee feeds on water plants. Its upper lip is divided into halves. The halves give the manatee a good grip on the plants as it eats.

Manatees live in the Amazon River and Caribbean Sea and along the coasts of northeastern South America, southeastern United States, and western Africa.



As a child, pictures mean so much more than the printed word. Also the opportunity to change the text to a different language and have it read to you were wonderful features that our varied population would and should appreciate.

2)As I wondered through the Student version, I could see the improvements with more information to read and the video. The options on the first page were very nicely done, covering the main areas of interest most middle school children have- geography, biography, current events, etc. The Tools section was easy to navigate and I could see children going to that initially for help.

As for the Manatee information it was much more detailed and gave other options for futher research such as magazine articles, other encyclopedia articles and Special reports.

3) When I went into the the advanced area and watched the tutorial for this website, I was overwhelmed by the amount of information that is there that I did not see upon looking at the home page. The research function is a hit in my book, as keeping track of what you have research and keeping it in an organized manner is priceless.

I researched Prussia (my ancesters came from there) and there is a multitude of articles, e-books, maps, primary sources, special resports and research quides. There is so much information, but with the pictures and leading sentences of each article, the patron can easily find the articles that they are interested in learning more about.

4) World book Discover would be a great help to any librarian that has patrons with special needs. There is also a lot of helps for researching techniques and writing research papers. The life skill section is for anyone who is not familar with our way of doing things or needing help with employment, finance information, health issues, and working on your own car. It had a wonderful aray of information.

Using the browse box and clicking on History and government, then into government; it came up with an article on government in general and then at the bottom it gave you options of different types of government for further research. It also would allow the patron to change the information into another language if needed or it could be read to them or if they were having trouble with understanding a word, they can click on it for a defination.

In conclusion I would have to say they are all wonderful sites and any age or nationality should be able to do research on any subject they wish. Isn't the tech age wonderful!

1 comment:

  1. Good & thorough comments, Family Searcher! We think World Book is wonderful because it has something for all ages & abilities. Thanks for your work here.

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