Encyclopedia Britannica Online An Invaluable Tool For All

Encyclopedia Britannica Online An Invaluable Tool For All Students and Teachers!

Your prayers have been answered! Do you wish. . . • You had a set of encyclopedias for each student in your classroom? • each student in your classroom had his/her own access to a multimedia resource such as United Streaming? • You and your students could have access to a wealth of resources to enrich teaching and learning? • You could easily correlate your lessons to state standards—TEKS? • Then read on!!!

Put the fun back into teaching! An encyclopedia, a dictionary, and a thesaurus all in one package, all in one place, all at the touch of your fingertip! There are three levels of search: • Encyclopedia Britannica—for high school student • Compton’s by Britannica—for middle graders • Britannica Elementary--perfect for elementary grades. • All three levels are on the homepage when you access the database. So be sure to choose Elementary or explore all three levels.

Features of an encyclopedia article • Table of Contents • Images & media- • • audio/video/photos enrich learning Journals/magazines-- pertinent articles for in-depth study The Web’s Best Sites—access to dozens of other links that provide relevant data Merriam-Webster’s Pop-up Dictionary—allows the student to double-click any word in the body of the article to get its meaning. Continued…

Features of an article continued. . . • Workspace project—allows the student to store articles, • • images, and other Britannica content in the workspace and retrieve or clear them at any time. Cite Articles—makes referring to an article in a report a snap! All the work is done for the student. This feature provides correctly formatted citation in MLA, APA, and Britannica format. Ability to E-mail Articles. Ability to Print Articles. Change Databases—if the elementary encyclopedia is too easy for your students, they can move up to higher reading levels by accessing one of the other two encyclopedias: Compton’s by Britannica for middle school kids or Encyclopedia Britannica for high school student.

Still Continued…(This is good!) • Curriculum Standards—a great, timesaving tool for teachers. • • • This feature is a great resource for managing TEKS objectives and incorporating the articles that support specific objectives into your lesson plans. By clicking the feature key and choosing your state, you’ll see which TEKS objective/s does the article address. Not only that, but remember vertical alignment? Who could forget, eh? Well, here, the Texas TEKS standards for grades 1 -6 (elementary encyclopedia), covered by each article, are laid out before your eyes all on one screen. So you see what objectives are addressed by a specific article in each subject area for grades 1 st, 2 nd, 3 rd, and so on. But wait, there is more. . . Move on to the next slide.

And more. . . • There is also a tab titled “Matrix Search” that allows you to pull up ALL the TEKS objectives for any subject, for any grade level, all on one screen. You can pull up all the science TEKS that need to be covered for the year in your grade level, or all the LA TEKS objective, and so on. . . You get the point!

Other useful, very useful features. • 1. 2. 3. Right on the homepage: BROWSE key –Allows search by subject: art/geography/etc. Each subject category is further divided into subcategories: ex—Religion divided into 1. Amish 2. Baha’i Faith 3. Bible etc. A-Z BROWSE –allows you to search the entire encyclopedia alphabetically. It’s like sitting down at your desk with an entire set of encyclopedias. BIOGRAPHIES –from Hank Aaron to Emiliano Zapata, your students can browse the biographies alphabetically. Imagine, how much easier it is going to be finding cognitively appropriate materials on topics/persons chosen by your students for research projects/reports/etc.

Useful features continued. . . • LEARNING MATERIALS feature –(fun, and oh, so useful!) • • Great for reviewing materials taught in the classroom. Awesome extension activities here, most of them interactive (interactive lessons & exercises ). Kids will love this feature; they think they’re only playing, when in fact, they’re learning and honing their skills! All four major subjects are covered under LEARNING MATERIALS. And all the materials have been correlated to state standards. Just click on the “Standard” button to see which TEKS objectives are covered. Three other aspects of the LEARNING MATERIALS feature are: 1. Web Site Activities, Encyclopedia Activities (provide study guides, print-outs, worksheets, useful links, downloads, quizzes, etc. ) 2. The Learning in Action (provides video/audio, some interactive, instructions and lessons. It’s like giving each student his/her own access to the United Streaming!)

Useful features continued. . . • WORLD ATLAS feature –your students will have access to • (physical and, if appropriate, political maps) of all the continents, countries, states, provinces, oceans, etc. They can even print out any map or cite it in their report/research paper. COMPARE COUNTRIES feature –Great compare/contrast activity center. Students can pull up any two countries and compare these countries’ maps, flags, statistics, geographies, histories, economies, cultures, etc. Most comparisons include a Related Media component that provides downloads, audios, videos/animated presentations. Also almost all searches in this section will include an Explore Related Images with dozens of photos that can be printed out for use in reports. Related Links key takes the students to other related articles to expand their search.

Useful features continued. . . • TIMELINE feature –Interactive timeline. Starts with the formation of • • • our Solar System at about 4, 700, 000 B. C. and follows through to the present time!!! Does that about cover it all? ! Students can pull up related encyclopedia articles on any specific date on the timeline. ANIMAL of the DAY feature. ACTIVITY of the DAY feature. VIDEO COLLECTION feature –(Video clips provide quick topic overviews in four major content areas. The Extended Play Videos provide more in-depth coverage in the four major content areas. ) FEATURED SPOTLIGHT feature. DISCOVER AMERICA feature – (Great social studies resource. Giving quick access to statistics and summary information for every state!) NEWS by STUDENT NEWS NET --(Headlines, stories, events, that have made headlines. Daily news for your kids!)

More useful features continued. . . • 1. 2. 3. 4. BRITANNICA LEARNING ZONE (for Pre. K-2 STUDENTS)—a new feature! This site is easy-on-the-eye and our younger kids can quickly learn to navigate this user-friendly site. The site is divided into four major sections: Explore – Great social studies, science, geography resource. A wealth of videos teaching students about an array of topics. From Hawaii’s many volcanoes to physical attractions in Australia and from French cooking to open-air markets in West Africa to Antarctica’s wildlife students can travel the globe from the confines of their classrooms and learn about various cultures, environments, animals, etc. Play –An interactive learning station, teaching students cognitively appropriate concepts in math and science. Read –Teaches students words, their multiple meanings, and an example of how they’re used in sentences. Draw –Kids will absolutely love this key. They get to choose from a menu of items to draw. For the art lovers!

Encyclopedia Britannica Online • What a wonderful gift. • Take a few minutes to • familiarize yourself with the database and all that it has to offer. I am sure you will find this an absolutely invaluable tool. When you visit the database, click the key titled “Guided Tour” if you wish for, well, a guided tour of the site. Just one more slide to go…

Log-in information. • Look for Britannica Encyclopedia Online icon • on your Novell screen. Or, you can log onto: • http: //www. school. eb. com • http: //www. spanish. eb. com