HIT: ele. atlas & encycl--book / CD-Rom

[Carol Van Hook <Hook2025@AOL.COM>]

Hit list on popular Atlas (book) and (CD-Rom)
                         and
favorite Encyclopedias(books) and (CD-Rom)

A.  Atlas (book):

 1.  " I  like the National Geographic book atlas."--<OH>

2.  I HAVE A RANDOM HOUSE CLASSROOM ATLAS (1993) which I enjoy using in the
media center for lessons on Atlases.--<MD>

3.  "I LOVE the Goodes Atlases.   They contain all sorts of information and
have a terrific index."  <WA>

4.  "We like the Kingfisher Reference Atlas, an A-Z guide to countries of the
world.  Not terribly good area maps but excellent summaries of individual
countries." <NC>

B.  Atlas (CD-Rom):

1.  The top favorite:  "We really like National Geographic's CD Picture Atlas
of the World."  This
response came from <VA, OH, MD>

2.  A media specialist states:  [The Electronic Arts 3D World Atlas on CD-ROM
is excellent. It is the best multimedia  presentation that I have seen
dealing with Geography. It is quite
up-to-date and has lots of facets to it. There is a wonderful game on it,
too, called "Around the World".  Weaknesses: (a) is only available for Mac
            (b) the game is best played _after_ students have studied
some of the flags and country data, unless the students playing have been
overseas, or are super-literate geographically!
            (c) requires system 7 or later and 3MB free RAM
I 've noticed that adults enjoy learning from this game as much as kids do.]

3.  "Virgin Atlantic Airways has produced The Virgin One World Atlas on CD."
 <NC>

C.  Encyclopedias (books):

1.  A middle school/high school librarian from North Carolina beautifully
states why we should continue to promote our hard copy encyclopedias:  "My
school is grades 5-12, and I am having good success weaning the middle
schoolers from World Book to Acad
ic American.  I find Encarta to be more of a nuisance than a help.  The
students all want to "use the computer" for all of their research projects
and Encarta (I have '95) seems to have very brief articles.  Yes, they are
sort of easy to locate and fun
 look at and print, but 99% of the time there seems to be more info in the
print encyclopedias."

2.  "Academic American (pub. by Grolier) has more articles than any
encyclopedia except Americana.  The articles are short, but it is a great
source."  <IL>

3.  For book encyclopedias I have World Book, Compton's, New Book of
Knowledge and the Children's Britannica which is good for 3rd grade.--<OH>

4.  I like World Book for the elementary school.  Both paper and CD. <MD>


D.  Encyclopedia (CD-Rom):

Here is a variety of thoughts--
1.  One media specialist says:  "I use Comptons and Encarta at school, but at
home we bought Groliers, which I like best of all."

2.  "First Connections, A CD-Rom  is good for lower readers (or upper readers
in
the lower grades).  I don't like Groliers CD because the type and vocabulary
are too difficult for elementary schools."  <MD>

Thanks to all responses.  Here are some interesting titles to look at.  Happy
holidays!

Carol VanHook
Ele. Med. Spec., Southeast Polk Comm. Schools
Des Moines, IA
email:  hook2025@aol.com