Tuesday, November 6, 2007

World Book Fun

My school district subscribes to a number of online databases for our students (in addition to the State of Georgia sponsored database system called Galileo) and World Book Online is one of the databases we subscribe to. I am a HUGE proponent of databases in schools and I promote them heavily - the kids usually know me as NO GOOGLE girl (although, Google, I LOVE you so, I really do, but for educational purposes, databases rule, you'll forgive me, Google, right?)

Anyway, as I was preparing for a lesson today on using World Book Online with 3rd graders I found this contest and this HILARIOUS video by two guys named Rhett and Link. The video describes the contest, which is asking students to make a 2 minute video on evaluating websites but the video also helps describe some aspects of evaluating websites. The contest deadline is November 30th, so not that much time, but the video is a great teaching tool in and of itself. I used it today with a group of 5th graders and they loved the video and I think they really "got" what the guys were saying about evaluating websites. I hope that World Book keeps the video by Rhett and Link up even after the contest is over, or even better, that they have these two guys come up with some more videos on research topics! You can watch the video without having a subscription to World Book online, but to have access to the database your school (or district) must subscribe.

2 comments:

Jone said...

How do you like the World book on-line? We have Grolier. I am the "no google" girl at my school as well. Signing in from my personal blog not "Check It Out".

Unknown said...

I do like it, but I think it is pretty comparable to Grolier. We used to have Grolier and they got rid of it this year. I do hope that World Book adds more video content to help people like me teach, it really helped to engage the kids and get their attention.