Lesson 10 Wrap up.

I have really enjoyed the library challenge. I didn't know that there were so many things available on the web for people to access. I will definitely use the genealogy resources the most. I already use Ancestry.com, but I found more things I can do with it through this challenge. I know I'll continue to look at the lessons in Heritage Quest. They have some great lessons for people wanting to know more about genealogy and how to use tools available to them. I'm also going to use Sanborn Maps to put pictures into my ancestors' profiles that show the time and the place where they lived.

I've been telling the people I work with about the challenges each week and what I've explored. I'm going to continue to do so and to keep my ears open in case someone is looking for something or needing information and I can say, "Have you tried....." This has been such a fun, learning experience. Thank you Jane and Julie.

Lesson 9

I've patiently been waiting for this week. I'm so excited it is here. I love genealogy and I'm excited to get exploring.

ANCESTRYLIBRARY
Question 1
I started with putting in my maiden name and I found a number of year book pictures of me. It will be fun to add those to my site at home. I also put in my married name and found telephone/address lists from previous years and family trees with my name in them.

Question 2
Next I searched for my grandma Hannah Hester Brugger. I found her birth information, her death information and I found her in every census from 1900 to 1940. I was able to track her from her maiden name of Brugger to her married name of Wendland and where they lived during that time period.

Question 3
I had problems finding the location part so I went in to search and found pictures and then typed South Dakota. I found some post cards that linked to South Dakota including the Court House in Highmore, SD and the Government Building in Deadwood. Now there isn't a date on the post card of the Highmore Court House, other than circa 1900 - present, but I'm amazed at how big it looks. I'll have to drive through Highmore and see if it's still there. There are some great old pictures of Huron that I'll definitely use in my genealogy.

HERITAGE QUEST
Question 4
I chose to browse and I found the new Learning Center and found a gold mine of information. There are some great videos that will help with your genealogy research. I chose to watch County Histories and Your Family. It was a nice presentation that included a PPT presentation. There are others on Census Tracking for Beginners and Getting Started with Family History Research.

SANBORN MAPS
Question 5
I looked at the block between 3rd and 4th street and Dakota and Wisconsin avenues in Huron in the time period between the late 1920s to the mid 1940s. The old Marvin Huett hotel was around then as it is now, but now it is apartments. There were also a couple of banks on the block that were around back then. It was interesting to see things like "fireproof" or "fireproof except for wood roof" and things like that.

Week 8 WorldCat, CAMIO and More

I started this week with WorldCat. Again, this was a totally new experience for me. I knew this existed. I decided to search for one of my classic favorite books, "The Hound of the Baskervilles."
I've always been a Sherlock Holmes fan. There were 1,808 records found that had The Hound of the Baskervilles either alone or as part of a set of other stories. Of that 1,168 were in English. The number one entry showed 1,189 libraries world-wide that had that book. The top link showed that the book was in Pleasantville, N.Y. library.

The call number or class descriptor is: LC: PR4621; Dewey: 823/.8.  I went to click on the author's name to see what else would be listed and found that there were 28,972 records associated with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Wow! Of those 17,457 were in English. I then went to the descriptor which I figured was the subject and found that I was looking for English detective and mystery stories. When I clicked on the link it took me to 10,872 records (in English) that dealt with the subject I was looking for. I didn't know the Lee Child was considered in this category. I really enjoy reading his books, as well as P.D. James and of course who could forget Agatha Christie.

I clicked on Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James to see where it was located as an audio book. The Brookings Public Library was the only library in SD that had it listed, but a number of Iowa, Montana and Wyoming libraries had it listed in audio format.

DISCOVER 2
Next is the OAIster. I'm glad someone added the pronunciation for me. I looked at what was available and chose the Retirement Planning Information brochure from SDRS (since I can take early retirement in a little over two years if I choose to I thought this was a good choice). As long as I was here, I scrolled some more and found another document from SDRS on Level Income Payment Option.

When I checked out another couple blogs, I noticed that one of the bloggers looked at the same OAIster that I did.

DISCOVERY 3
I typed in Sioux to the CAMIO search link. It showed 63 results, beautiful pictures, books, sculptures, photographs, etc.. I took a close look at the first item in the listing because of the title, a Scalp Shirt. The shirt is circa 1890 and is Lakota Sioux. According to the description it says the Lakota Sioux Scalp Shirts were often painted blue or green on the top to represent the sky and yellow on the bottom to represent the earth. According to the description, the hair on the shirts aren't scalps, but locks of hair from family members or friends who've donated them. Each lock represents a war exploit performed by the shirt's owner. After 1870 (the Reservation period) the wars ceased so the scalp shirts became items of ceremonial or formal attire.

Another great exploration week. Thanks for the tours.

Lesson 7 EBooks on EbscoHost

I've listened to testimony during session from parents that have children with Autism and have tried Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and say they are getting great results so I wanted to read more on this subject.

Applied behavior analysis is the field of study that focuses on the principles, methods and procedures of the science of behavior. ABA focuses on the behavior of people. Interventions are directed at changing environmental events to improve behavior. Differential reinforcement of other behavior is used as a way to provide social reinforcement for appropriate play, academic activities, self hygiene and so on.

Typically, target behavior and the events that proceed and follow the responses are counted for several days. This develops a baseline and treatment is withheld so that a later change in behavior can be evaluated. Following this baseline assessment a behavior plan of action is developed. The plan includes target responses, consequences that follow different actions and long term goals.

It was easy to search for chapters in the book and go to the specific chapter I wanted to read on ABA.

Next I searched for appropriate titles for students for Constitution Day. My search showed 38 titles. Since there wasn't a lot of information on ages of students I looked for different titles for different ages. One that would work for younger students was "Colonies and Revolution" which is a juvenile nonfiction. There was a dictionary of American History that I thought would work for information and a companion to the US Constitution and it's amendments for older students.

For the next task I followed the directions using PB Publisher and Oklahoma and came up with 61 search results. Everything from "Boots and Saddles: Or, Life in Dakota with General Custer"  to "A Tour on the Prairies". Everything was listed as University of Oklahoma Press.

Another interesting learning lesson for me.

Lesson 6 Gale Virtual Reference

I started out searching the Gale Encyclopedia of Cancer because my husband has a very rare form of cancer so I like to search out information on his type. I found that there are only one to two cases of neuroendocrine pancreatic tumors for every 100,000 people. The average age of diagnosis is 53 years of age and he was diagnosed at age 56. It talked about the shot he gets each month (Sandostatin) and through the references I found out how nutrition can help with the symptoms.

I used the search feature to see if there were any other articles on neuroendocrine tumors or carcinoid tumors in the Gale library. There were a couple more that I looked at to see what more information I could glean. Then I tried out the "listen" feature. It wasn't bad, but it would take some getting used to listening to the computer voice. What a great reference this was for me. The article was easy to read and understand. The encyclopedia was 2010. I don't know when they put out an updated version, but I think it would be great to get the newest information because cancer research is changing all the time.

I then used the search at the top of the page to look up the Mediterranean Diet and found an article called the Anti-Cancer Diet which has a lot of the principles of the Mediterranean diet. Since the Anti- cancer diet talked about the Mediterranean diet my next article was on this diet. I learned it isn't really a diet as it is a way of life. How many times you should eat red meats per month, what you should eat weekly and what you should eat daily.

I checked out Tolliver's Tablet and found she learned about the highlighting of words and sentences in the listen feature so I went back and utilized it on a paragraph in one of the articles I was researching. It is a nice feature. I also checked out Karen's Blog and found she looked up the Encyclopedia of Cancer too.

Lesson 5 Proquest

1. I searched for prediabetes and then narrowed it down to magazines. I found an article that I wanted to read titled “Do You Have Prediabetes.”  It was a good article and I’m glad I read it. It was in relation to women’s health and it had an easy quiz to see if you should visit your doctor.

Because the first article got me interested I looked up another article. This one was on how treating prediabetes might prevent a full-blown disease. It talked about a study of 3,000 people who were randomly assigned to one of three groups: one group was asked to make lifestyle changes; a second group was given the drug metformin, which lowers blood sugar; and the third group was given an inactive placebo. The goal of the program was for participants to reduce their blood sugar levels to a normal range.

The new study was to look at these individuals years later. What they found was that patients who were able to return to normal blood sugar levels, even for a short period, could prevent or slow progression to full type 2 diabetes. The researchers found that people who reduced their blood sugar had a 56 percent reduction in progression to diabetes during nearly six years of follow-up. And this was regardless of how those normal blood sugar levels were achieved (exercise, diet, medication) and even when it was only for a short time.

What I found interesting is that it didn't matter how people got back to normal blood sugar, whether with diet and exercise or with metformin or placebo, but just the fact that by getting back to normal it prevented or slowed the progression of the diabetes. The next study will need to be looking at whether the regression improves other long-term health care outcomes such as heart disease, kidney disease or blindness.

I’m so glad I read these two articles. Time for me to make an appointment.

1. a. I read Mike’s blog and commented on it. I really enjoy reading what Mike writes because it is always interesting and I usually learn something. Way to go Mike.

2. My background includes many years in special education so I looked for special education. There were three publications dealing with the topic of special education in the title. When I changed it to search for special education in the subject that number went up to 28, which included scholarly journals, trade journals and magazines. This was a good reminder for me to remember to search in different ways.

Lesson 4:

SIRS Discoverer
1. Look up armadillos (or your favorite animals) and discuss the results. Note if you find pictures and the various reading levels of the articles. (Remember, articles in SIRS Discoverer are selected, so you may not find something from yesterday's news.)

When I looked up armadillos I found a number of articles ranging in reading levels from general reading, to easy and then to moderate. There was a variety of Lexile scores to help determine the right one for students. I loved the variety of articles that were available from Ranger Rick to National Geographic. There were also a number of pictures you could choose in the list of articles.

2. Some of the most useful features in SIRS Discoverer are the "Database Features" located on the right hand side of the window. Explore this section by:

• selecting a country in "Country Facts" and noting the information located there.
• I selected Canada. There are basic facts, a map, the flag, major historical events and additional resources at the bottom of the page that includes teacher resources.
• selecting a map in "Maps of the World" and discussing a potential use.
• I looked at the World Historical and US Historical maps. Wow!! There’s a lot of maps here. I think I could find some of these useful in my genealogy study, but I found myself just paging through and looking at some of the interesting things they’ve mapped out. The Indian cultures over the years, the different wars and battles fought in our country, the explorations.
• selecting one other area in "Database Features" and discuss the information located there.
• I chose the special “Olympics” section in the database features. It has everything from websites, to newspapers to magazine articles. The reading level goes from easy to challenging and there are a number of photo links also. A great variety of articles on all aspects of the games and the host country.

SIRS Issues Researcher
1. Select a leading issue and discuss the information located there, noting the topic overview, research tools and articles.

I chose the issue of bullying. Bullying is a form of abuse that can be emotional or physical. Many children and teens are bullied at school every day. Some of these victims become depressed and lose interest in their schoolwork. There have been too many instances where young people have committed suicide to escape the torment of bullies.

The research tools that are listed would be very helpful to anyone doing research on a topic. I thought the statistics and note organizer were very helpful.  Also, the amount of articles and the way you’re able to narrow your search for the type you’re looking for (newspaper, reference, graphics, etc.) is very helpful.

2. Select "Curriculum Pathfinders" on the right hand side of the window and mouse over the course subjects, noting the range of topics covered. Pick your favorite subject and discuss the information located there.

I looked at the subject of Health. There is quite a range of information listed under health; everything from community and environmental health to wellness and diseases. The page has two interactive links as well as a wide range of courses. I can learn about obesity and stress management all in one location. This is a site I’ll be visiting again.

Week Three of the Challenge.

This week I'm learning about something called Learning Express Library. This will be another new experience for me and I'm excited to find out what it's about.

I set up my account and started with Adult Learning. I decided I needed some math tutorials, boy was I right. Yikes – It looks like I need to go back to relearn fourth grade math. Since I did so poorly I started a lesson and liked the explanation and the quick response to my answers (which were correct, so I am teachableJ).

 In exploring the Job Search and Workplace Skills learning center I was happily surprised to find there are a number of courses available as well as ways to prepare for different exams. I think this is a valuable tool for someone looking for a career or changing careers.

I chose to browse through green careers. I never thought about “green” careers before. This was interesting to see everything from how to build a green resume to networking and  even green conferences. There is a lot of good information in the Learning Express Library. I’m glad I had the chance to explore what’s available.

Week two, here we go!!!

I started off this week with the ChiltonLibrary. I never knew this existed and this is the first time I've been to the site. I found a lot of information about automobiles.

Basic Discovery Exercise

1. Look up the maintenance schedule for your vehicle. View the whole chart and list 3 things that should be done at 30,000 miles. My vehicle didn’t have 30,000 miles as an option. It had 25,000 miles and 50,000 miles so I went with the 50,000 since that is closest to my mileage. 1) replace the air cleaner filter, 2) replace the passenger compartment air filter and 3) inspect the fuel system.

2. What was the most recent Technical Service Bulletin or Recall notice on your car about and when was it issued? A Clunk or Thump type of noise from  the front suspension was the most recent technical service bulletin.

3. Click to the Repair tab and note some of the information about brakes for your car.  I found under the Anti-lock braking system a lot of information such as: description and operation procedures, diagnostic information and procedures, repair instruction, special tools and equipment and the specifications.

Next I went on to explore Mango. I thought this would be exciting when I saw the posters up on the doors of the library and was excited to try it out. Here's my Basic Discover Exercise.

Basic Discovery Exercise

1. In Mango, choose a language. Before you click “Launch,” read about the language and culture. What did you learn?  I learned that German is spoken not only in Germany, but also in Austria and Switzerland.

2. Click“Launch” and try out a lesson. How helpful would this program be to help you learn a language? What did you like? What didn’t you like? Why? I loved this. I took German in high school and boy have I forgotten a lot. It is easy to use and the lessons are short. It is free, which is always great. I also am wondering if I can use the translate tab in my genealogy to translate some German language that I don’t know.

Lesson 1 - World Book Online

Things have definitely changed since I was a kid and spent time reading our World Book encyclopedias. What a great resource for not only students, but everyone who loves to learn. I checked out the World Book School Edition and did the basic discover exercises listed, but I also checked out the World Book Advanced Public Library edition and found easy access to newspapers.

 

Using World Book Kids, I searched for information on the Giant Panda which lives in the forests of China. Giant Pandas eat Bamboo, but the Panda’s in the wild are losing their habitat.

Next I viewed the World Book Student edition where I compared the amount of information it showed when I looked up Giant Pandas. There is at least twice the information in World Book Student and it goes into more detail as you would expect.

Then I went on to check out the World Book Advanced edition and I searched for Germany. I like that the left hand side bar has the contents neatly laid out and easy to scan, while the right side has related information and the content standards.

My last exploration was to use the browse function in the World Book Discover and find an article on American government. It is great that the articles can be translated into different languages and it is very helpful that there is a read-aloud function available.