Lesson 2

I like Mango as a language learning program.  There are numerous repetitions and the lessons break down the sentences into pieces. The lessons teaches words for specific situations. It pronounces the word for you and allows you to repeat the pronunciation until you feel comfortable.  Mango for a Vietnamese student would be helpful because it has lessons to learn English for a Vietnamese speaker.  I imagine it would be similar to the lesson I did for English to Spanish.

On Chilton’s there are instructions for car care.  For instance, the three things that should be done at 30,000 miles are replace the air conditioning and engine air filters, the engine oil and filter. The most recent technical notice was the CA/FED/50 State Certified Emission Control Underhood Labels -  4/23/13. This notice provided guidelines that ensure proper label application.  This is geared toward technical or dealer notification and not something the average owner would worry about. Under the repair tab, the brake section illustrates a diagram about how to properly adjust the parking brake shoe clearance. These would be excellent instructions if I knew where to install hub nuts, or where the shoe adjusting hole plug was. I think I’ll just take my car to a mechanic.

Tumblebook library was a very kid-friendly website. The storybooks contained cute animated pictures in the books. The reader of the books was animated and enthusiastic. The words being read are highlighted in a different color. There is an option to read it on your own, with this option, you can click on a word and have it sounded out for you. This feature is great for kids learning to read. At the end of the book, there was a word list with a pronunciation guide. I would have enjoyed this website as a child and it’s a good site for parents and teachers looking for spelling list for kids.

The games had fun sound effects and positive reinforcements at the end of each game with clapping, excitement and a big “you win!” I thought the puzzles and games were age appropriate with materials for kids with many different interests to explore.

I would recommend this to people with children just learning to read or within the first few years of reading. The videos might be good for older kids too. I feel this website would help children struggling with reading because the program makes reading fun. It would also be good for children being home-schooled because it is something they could do on their own. It also provides lesson plans for teachers and parents. 

Lesson 1

      On World Book Kids, the article about the wolf featured two pictures and one video. It contained a short article written in a straightforward manner that most elementary and all middle school age children would be able to understand. The article is cited for the student in MLA, APA and Harvard formats for the user. On World Book Student, it had only a single picture, the same video and a sound file for the animal. It presented more detailed information on the animal including habitat, range and added descriptions of items mentioned in the World Book Kids article. I found the added history of conflict between wolf and man particularly interesting.
      On World Book Advanced Search, the side bars on the left showed an outline of the main topics in the article, the pictures, videos, and sounds within the article. The outline makes it easier to jump to specific information. It would also be helpful for students learning how to outline papers. The right side bar shows encyclopedia articles, websites, and magazine articles. The tabs on the left would be helpful in locating additional information not covered in the article. It provides the novice researcher good links to find further information. I think the tabs on the right would be the most helpful for students and those desiring to learn more information before traveling.
     World Book Discover’s articles have a read-aloud feature that would be very helpful to people who are not proficient readers in English. It demonstrates how the words are pronounced and highlights what is being read. In my experience, people that speak English as a second language often understand spoken English better than the written format. This aspect would help with their comprehension. It would also help those that don’t read well because of the same feature. The ability to double click on a word to define it is helpful because people don’t need to leave the page or make much of an effort to find the definition of a word. It links to World Book Student if the reader wants additional information, images, or videos.
    World Book Info Finder contains a lot more information and is comparable to what was available on the World Book Student page. Some terms in italics were new and they were defined in the reading material. I would say it is aimed at the same age group as World Book Student.
     World Book Reference Center features encyclopedia articles, United States Presidential papers, maps, tables, a dictionary, sounds, pictures, historical articles, special reports, websites and a research guide on the left side. On the right side the United States Presidential papers are mentioned again and here the user has the ability to obtain more detailed information from the papers. When browsing the article, there are links to articles about things to do and see in the country, plants, animals, and famous people. This article is similar to the World Book Advanced Search. The articles are excellent and link to numerous additional items that would be good for a student trying to narrow down a topic for research. There is also a link to an interactive map to locate where the country is.
    The visual dictionary is useful for non-English speakers because they could find what they wanted and learn the names for things they may not have seen before. The read aloud feature would be helpful by allowing the librarian and patron to hear the pronunciation of word that might get lost in translation.