LESSON 4 - SIRS

PART 1 - SIRS DISCOVER
Question 1
I looked up armadillos and got quite a few results (88 articles in all).  Most of them were moderate reading level and had pictures.  When I looked closely at them I realized that most were quite old.  Out of the first 25 results sorted by relevance only 11 were from the past 5 years and after the top 15 results the articles weren't really about armadillos but only mentioned them, but armadillos probably don't get a lot of articles written about them.

Question 2
I went exploring and there is a lot a good information.  The country facts give a brief overview of the country and I really like the links to additional resources if you would like to learn more.  The maps options was was nice also.  I especially liked the historical maps.  The company does need to clean up the site a bit.  Some of the tags must be off because when you click on the Canada maps there is a map of European Gay rights and an article about how the state department fired 126 "perverts" in 1951 in addition to the Canadian maps you would expect to find.

I also took a  look at the activities link which had a lot of fun options on it (real-aloud plays, crafts, etc.).  The Skills Discover has videos and interactive tutorials on different areas.  Great for visual learners.

Overall SIRS Discover has some really nice features, but could use a bit of a clean up.  I did find some recent articles (mostly Feb. 2014) but there were a few from the last week.  This is not a resource for current events.  Supervision will probably be needed to help kids get to the right results.

PART 2 - SIRS RESEARCHER
Question 1
I looked at ADHD and also cellular telephones on the leading issues page of SIRS Researcher.  The research tools are for the larger topic (mental health for ADHD and educational policies for cellular phones) but they are still very useful.  The topic overview, timeline, and global impact help illustrate the background of the particular topic while the my analysis and note organizer help organize the student's project.  The topic overview and articles were good and a lot more recent than what I saw on Discover.  One article was only 4 days old!

Question 2
The curriculum pathfinders brings up 6 areas of study: math, science, social studies, language arts, fine arts, and health.  Each area has research ideas, courses and other tools depending on the area.  There is a lot of neat stuff.  It is great for getting ideas for projects relevant to your area of study (ex: science has links on how to do a science project, notable people in science and controversial topics in science).  It also just has a lot of fun stuff.  There was a link to learn Mandarin on the language arts page and how to dance the samba on the fine arts page.

Overall I was really impressed with SIRS Researcher.  It has a lot of great information that would be useful for almost any class I could think of.  It is current (check out the Today's News/Current Events section).  It also has some things that are just fun (Samba anyone?).