Discovery Portal Tutorial Powerpoint for K-5 Teachers Correlating Notes

Slide 2: A federated search engine occurs when there is a simultaneous real-time search of multiple diverse sources from a single search page. This search mechanism aggregates results from a number of INFOhio electronic resource databases. These databases have been selected to match the subject area in which they are found. Best of the Web remains as a repository of 3+ million high quality websites that have been crawled and indexed for searching. A large collection of full-length digital videos courtesy of the Area Media Centers is available to be simultaneously searched with other resources then downloaded or played directly from within the discovery portal. The INFOhio eBook Collection includes 600-plus e-book public-domain titles from Project Gutenberg and 69 audio books from ThoughtAudio. These classic literature titles have been selected from school recommended reading lists and are available in multiple e-book formats. As with the videos these are simultaneously searched with other resources then downloaded or played directly from within the discovery portal. Slide 4: This method of accessing Discovery Portal only makes sense if you and your students are already working in the CAT. Otherwise, the easiest way in is through infohio.org. Slide 6: Teachers, students, and parents who are working at home will find that they need a username and password to access Discovery Portal and other resources available through INFOhio. To make it easy to remember, I have set this as northwood/rangers. However, if this doesnt work (and a few of the databases dont seem to respect this combo), the default is learn/infohio. Slide 7: Wherever you enter the Discovery Portal, the first screen you see is what we call a landing page. This is the Middle School landing page. This is where you would arrive if coming from CAT Jr. But no matter where you land in the portal, if you want to go to a different grade level it as easy as clicking on that button in the navigation bar. As you can see, there are resources designated not only by grade level, but for parents, educators, and librarians. There are also materials specifically for Childrens and Young Adults Literature. While Im not going to focus on most of those in this presentation, you are welcome to return to the Discovery Portal landing page and explore on your own. Slide 8: Here is the High School landing page. To move around within the portal, you have the navigation bar. From there, you can go to any of the grade-level landing pages, Childrens Lit. Resource, or any of the three guides for Parents, Educators, or Librarians where you will find material intended just for that audience. Notice on the bar beneath the navigation bar there is a breadcrumb that keeps track of where you are now and offers a way to get back to earlier visited pages. In the left column you will find the subject area directory or room index or some may know it as the taxonomy. For the three grade levels, this leads to 23 different subject topic areas to be explored or searched, all curriculum related. Slide 9: Lets look more closely at subject area content using the Middle School. As our first topic, lets select Life Science. Slide 10: You can see that the content on the page changes. The topics have narrowed in the left column taxonomy. We now have some How Do I questions relevant to Life Science encouraging critical thinking as well as student exploration. This helps students phrase the question of inquiry-based learning. The middle column contains interesting graphical content about Life Science, and in this case it is animated. The right column contains Cool Links and Fun and Games meant to engage students in the topic.

If you look at the bread crumb, you see that it is keeping track of where we are. Lets select What on Earth?. Slide 11: Again, you see that the content changes. The taxonomy or left menu contains even more narrowed subjects. The middle column has different graphical content. Once you enter a main topic area, like What on Earth?, the right column (Fun and Games and Whats That?) and the left column (How do I) remains the same. At the top, you see the breadcrumb reflects where we are and if you wanted to back up one topic, you could do this by clicking on the words What on Earth? in the bread crumb. But instead, lets click on Living Things and NonLiving Things. Slide 12: At this point you have reached the bottom of the subject chain where you will see the educatorselected websites for middle school-aged children about the human impact on the ecology. The breadcrumb has changed again and you know youve reached the bottom by the little world icons in the middle column instead of graphical content. Clicking on any of these titles in the middle column will pop-up a window with the website. For example, the first title under Fungi is pops up with an animated Fun Facts about Fungi. Slide 13: We will use the Elementary landing page to show the federated searching feature. You can see where the list of search targets drops down. Since the default is Everything, most users begin with an Everything search. When they do, the first results are INFOhio Electronic Resources like videos and ebooks. Our Everything search of rainforest located 28 results including a video and at least three rooms of content. First lets look at how to access video (which you can now show on your SMARTBoard very easily). Slide 14: A click on the title of the video takes you to a pop-up window where you can now see the abstract and subjects found describing this title. Notice that the abstract provides a summary of the contents of the video and the subject identifies other content that is also included. Look for other pertinent information such as the length of the video. If you click the View/Download button, you can access the video from here. Slide 15: From the View Video screen, you can collect information about the video itself: a summary, target audience, how many times it has been viewed, when it was last viewed, length and whether or not Flash is necessary to view it. You can also download the video from this screen to include on another website or Powerpoint (I think!). To view the video, simply click the forward arrow. You may also choose to view the video more clearly by clicking the full-screen button. In addition, this screen allows you to share the video with a colleague or to peruse other videos in the collection. Slide 16: If you remember, our search of rainforest also provided room content results. A room is another grouping of materials on a single topic. Clicking on the title of the room takes you to a new screen that displays this content. Then you can continue to access the identified resources by clicking their titles. Slide 17: While the term Everything suggests that all available resources would be identified, Everything actually refers to all Discovery Portal content. Thats why, in some cases, an Everything search is ineffective since it omits results from other databases. For instance, when I searched Everything for iditarod, I found nothing except the message, Switch to Web sites and Electronic Resources results. When I do by clicking this message, I find tabs to access the Best of the Web, EBSCOPrimary Search and World Book Kids. I can follow any one or all these links to another list of results.

To see the federated results, you will need to click Select Websites & INFOhio Electronic Resources. Because these federated search results are not specially indexed, they are presented in their own list. Slide 18: At those point, you can access any of the resources from outside websites and electronic resources. You can get results from these same outside websites at the beginning of a search if you click the Select Web Sites and Electronic Resources button at the top of the search results. Then just follow the links. Caution: I have found that some of these links dont work or take you to pages that cannot be found. While this is inconvenient, it is also a reality of a constantly shifting webspace. Slide 19: Two other helpful resources included in the Discovery Portal are the Educators Guide and the Childrens and Young Adult Literature resources. (Access this through the tool bar at the top of the page.) First the Childrens and Young Adult Literature Guide. This guide is a great jumping off point for both teachers and computer-savvy students who are looking for information about childrens lit. Youll find everything from summer reading suggestions to links to book reviews to suggestions for how to learn more about audiobooks. Resources can be filtered by age level and in some cases can lead to eBook titles. Slide 20: For instance, within the elementary school lit guide, I searched for Beatrix Potter and got access to 16 different eBooks by Potter. (Nearly all the eBooks accessible through Discovery Portal are unprotected by copyright; resources for contemporary titles are generally limited to links to author websites and reviews. ) When you click on one of these Peter Rabbit titles, you can access the eBook in several different formats so that you can either view it on the computer (and SMARTBoard!) or download it to an eReader. Slide 21: The View/Download button will open a pop-up within the eBook and video site. Here you can choose the format desired, read the book in HTML, or show more information about the record details. On this page the View opens the book within the eReader that you are currently using to view this page or the Download button downloads the book so you can import it into your eReader library and read it at your leisure. The EPUB format can be loaded on a Kindle or other eReader. Directions for use are available from this page if eBook use is new to you. Slide 22: The material available from the Educators Guide landing page is geared for teachers and can be filtered by grade level. Note that How Do I relates to topics from classroom management to virtual field trips. The Tools for School are web-based tools that can also be integrated into your instruction. A lot of helpful material is available from this page; its worth wandering through on a rainy day. Back to the search tool. The page is set up in the same way as all other Discovery Portal pages, so you can conduct a search of the same kinds of materials that students can. I would encourage you to look at the ebook collection that INFOhio has been working very hard to develop. Its also worth looking through the How Do I topics, the Fun & Games activities, and the other materials offered through the right and left columns. The center module shifts regularly to reflect important issues in education. If you have any additional questions or want to set up a time for more training, email me at kjames@northwood.k12.oh.us or call the high school library. Ill be glad to help. Enjoy! Kris James