The visual dictionary was very easy to use and to the point. A high school student could use this resource to help in a spanish class. At this time we do not have spanish speaking students living in our community but what a great resource if we did. It sure helped me brush up on some spanish review from college. The articles read aloud in spanish is also a great tool for students in spanish class as we do not have a native speaker, so hearing the correct dialect and annunciation is wonderful practice as they read along with the speaker.

The World book for kids Public edition had the same information on wildcats as the school version did for the student one so I opted for a different animal. The koala bear lives in trees and sleeps during the day. It eats eucalyptis leaves. Using the World book online info finder there was much more information relating to the koala along with 3 additional videos, a map of its location and specific information regarding its history.

The reference center seemed to be the same site as the school edition. Sidebar links help seekers to find specific information more easily and accurately.

Lesson 1a
I looked up wildcat on the WB kids and it led me to a page on cats. After skimming the article, which was quite lengthy and informative, with pictures and videos, I saw links to cats in the wild such as lions, tigers, cheetas, leopards and even ocelots, but no wildcat. Then when I went to WB Student it found wildcat and had a picture but the information was limited. I found it is probably the ancester of the domestic cat but is larger and stronger. It lives in deserts, swamps and forests and other habitats in Europe, Asia and Africa. It eats small animals, along with birds, fruit and insects. Looking at the picture, it resembles a tabby more that I would have expected.

Using World Book Advanced I selected the country of Norway. There were pages and pages of information which could ultimately overwhelm a patron. It was much easier to narrow down the search to specific information that I wanted to research. This would help a great deal in whether the patron was a Girl Scout needing to study the cuisine or customs of a culture, a government student wishing to study thier politics or someone just needing quick information like the design of the flag.

WB Discover was handy in that once you got to a specific heading you could choose to continue to narrow the search in your preferred language. This is definately helpful to those who a re learning the language of the country. I also sampled the tool that read aloud the article and it was not as easy to use, stopping after a sentence and not being able to start it again. Also the word definer didn't give any indication which words were available for definitions and which ones weren't. I tried various words and only a few would come up. This could be very frustrating.

I finally did it!