Thanks to the folks who replied to my plea for help- here is my original question
followed by replies:
Hello all,
I'm preparing to make a presentation to the elementary principals in my district in
an effort to convince them to purchase a district-wide database bundle. It's a
screaming deal- $1/student/year and includes an extensive EBSCO collection, World
Book's Complete Reference Suite, and Encyclopedia of BC's entire database. The
elementary principals are hesitant to "OK" this deal since they are unable to see
how it would benefit elementary students (we're on a "school-based budgeting" model
around here; however, we need full buy-in from the district to get the deal). There
are plenty of resources available for younger students, including Primary Search,
Middle Search Plus, World Book Kids and Novelist (K-8).
Besides proving that the resources are worthy, I am wondering if anyone knows of
any research in support of database use in an elementary setting?
Any comments, suggestions, redirection, or testimonials would be very helpful! I
need to have this together for Monday the 30th.
Thanks in advance,
Tina Sherlock
Teacher Librarian
Mamquam Elementary School
Squamish, BC Canada
Sea to Sky School District No.48
tsherlock@sd48.bc.ca
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My principal said almost exactly the same thing. He couldn't see how often we could
use it, and that our public library system has quite a few free for those in the
city. The problem I have also has to do with my own lack of education on the
subject. I've never taken a course on databases, and I can only grab a few
professional growth hours each year. If you hear of anything available "out there"
for free / next to free that would offer quick and dirty training in this, let us
all know about it please!
Best wishes on receiving your funding, and be sure to keep us posted on which
arguments worked for you.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We have World Book Online this year and the fourth graders are finding
it very useful for biography research. We are also going to try Boolean
searching on it today, not sure if it will support it. Our fifth grade
is doing art research and found it to be better than doing a wide search
because you don't get useless hits. The way the results are organized
is very logical and often gives you what you need in the top three
search choices. I will be using it with our third graders shortly when
we do solar system research and I am looking forward to that because
when we did it with selected resources last year the readability of some
of the solar system sites was too challenging for them to learn from or
get the details of the information available. Using World Book Online
has saved time in that we don't have to winnow suitable sites for
students and they aren't getting useless when they do a broad search.
It's written for students which is not true of most of the websites
online today and that saves time and aggravation. It took them about 15
minutes after a tutorial to be able to navigate successfully so the
learning curve is good as well.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
You might look to see what your local educational standards say. I know our TEKS
(Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) states that from 3rd grade on, students need
to be actively exposed to research in all forms. Definitely by 5th grade, kids
should be doing research, which includes online research. Perhaps stating that,
with this service, you can do away with buying new encyclopedia sets every 5 years,
as online EB is updated regularly, would help, since those sets are so darned
expensive....
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How about the argument for access to professional resources fro teachers? That's
what worked with my administrators! I shared the cost of our prof journals and the
cost for the db subscription. Voila!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I have free access to Ebsco, SIRS, etc. through our power library program through
the state of PA
Our students use databases extensively. I would be lost without them. It has
broadened our students knowledge, enabled them to learn advanced searching
techniques, and improve the end product of their research. Plus, these are the
skills they will need to succeed in high school and college.
I can forward you my usage statistics if you would like.
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