Thing 17: ELM Productivity Tools

I have used and taught ELM to my students since the year it came out (1999 or 2000?). I just taught it to my 2nd-5th graders about a month ago – modeling a pretend search in a curricular area where they were currently studying (i.e. 5th grade, Civil War – battles).

Gale/InfoTrac
I managed to set an RSS feed to my Google Reader from the Student Edition of InfoTrac on the topic of “youth smoking.” I tried several times to get the Minitex instructional video to play but it just wouldn’t load.

I like the multimedia aspect of the ELM databases. I usually show my students an example of some multimedia on the topic at hand, such as a video or sound byte – many of which I found in Kids InfoBits.

EBSCO
I created a webpage using the “Page composer” tool and utilities. I finally learned I had to click on the “Preview” button to see what the page looked like. Pretty slick – but someone please tell me when I would use such a page??

Proquest Newsstand
O.K. I just went to Proquest and found 3 articles on “social networking” in the Washington Post in 2007 and emailed them to myself. It is interesting that Proquest is creating an html file (a web page) to be emailed.

BY THE WAY, THIS “STICK” IS HARD WORK!!

NetLibrary (eBooks)
“NetLibrary provides access to your library’s eContent collection. eContent is the digital version of books, journals, and database content. You can access your library’s eContent 24 hours a days, seven days a week.”
From the homepage of NewLibrary website, http://www.netlibrary.com.

I created an account in NetLibrary.

I did the search on the book, 101 ways to promote your web site, and used the utility to find out about branding and made a few notes for later reference. This is a very rich site for ebook information! I had never used it before.

BY THE WAY, NONE OF THE MINITEX VIDEOS LOADED!! I learned this stuff all by myself!

ELM – "Authentic, valid information at your fingertips!"