The findingDulcinea Blog

Beyond Jackie & Rosa: Helping Students Find Unfamiliar People to Write About for Black History Month

Recently, my daughter Maggie’s 10th-grade Global Studies Class was asked to write a biography about a famous woman from Asia, Africa or South America. The teacher said that in the prior school year, 90 percent of the students chose Mother Teresa. The teacher promised bonus points for anyone who chose an unfamiliar woman. While Maggie feels I am a detriment when it comes to her writing a paper, she held out some hope that I could suggest a suitable woman for her to profile. 

Together we reviewed our “Happy Birthday” feature for the past three months and found 11 women from these three continents. A week later, Maggie claimed her bonus points, and indeed knocked the teacher’s socks off, by turning in a well-sourced paper on  Wangari Muta Maathai, the first woman from Africa to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The experience gave rise to SweetSearch Biographies. 

Once we had launched findingDulcinea, we realized we had a giant archive of terrific content that was not accessible enough. So we developed SweetSearch, a Search Engine for Students, which searches only our content and the tens of thousands of Web sites that our staff has evaluated and approved as credible resources. We then created SweetSearch Web Links to put the very best links from our dozens of Web Guides to Education on a single page.

Maggie's assignment reminded me that students are often asked to write a biography about a significant person from a particular profession, gender or race/national origin. We knew we had hundreds of biographical profiles in our Happy Birthday, On This Day and features sections, and that to make them easily accessible, we had to put them all in one place and allow students to sort them. SweetSearch Biographies launched last week, and offers well-sourced profiles, or the SweetSearch results page, for more than 1,000 significant people, and can be filtered by profession, gender and race/national origin. One elated school librarian cheered the timing, at the beginning of Black History Month, as she was "a little weary of Jackie and Rosa who are of course important but sometimes you need to stretch a bit to someone unfamiliar." Given the 80+ profiles of African-Americans, students should be able to knock their teachers’ socks off by finding someone unfamiliar. 

Here are links to five people whose life stories amazed me when I first read about them on our Web site:

Elizabeth Blackwell

Thor Heyerdahl

Miriam Makeba

Rita Moreno

Witold Pilecki

Thank you for reading,

Mark Moran

Forget the Textbook; Will the iPad and Kindle DX Help Lighten Students' Backpacks?

With the recent unveiling of Apple's iPad, which looks like an oversized iPhone, some publications have begun to speculate that the new touch screen, keyboard-free netbook will also double as a textbook.

The reason for the speculation is that the iPad will feature an iBookstore along with its iBooks application, which will allow users to download and then read books on their device. If that sounds like something you've already heard of, you're right. The new app could make the iPad a competitor to Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader.

And bringing a digital device into the classroom is nothing new, either. Last year, Amazon began attempts to integrate the Kindle DX, a larger version of the original Kindle, into the classroom. It gave away a couple hundred of the electronic readers to college students, with mixed results.

According to an article by Jessica Mintz of the Associated Press, while students liked that the Kindle DX allowed them to access a number of textbooks in one device, some students missed the old-fashioned method of notetaking and dog earing books. Professors found it hard to direct students to the proper page numbers in textbooks because the Kindle DX doesn't number pages, and students can choose the size of the text on each page, potentially creating a different number of pages.

Will Apple's iPad be able to overcome some of the Kindle DX's hurdles in gaining wider use in schools? And will readers prefer the iPad screen for reading compared with the Kindle's screen, which was designed to be easy on the eyes? That remains to be seen. For now, some of the major publishers have already started working on developing iPad applications for study help, but no official word on the actual texts being converted for the iBookstore. 

With the cost of the iPad and the Kindle DX both inching toward $500, even if the texts are cheaper than the hard copies, it is hard to say whether students and parents will want to invest in the products. Many students already have MP3 players and schools have invested heavily in netbooks and computers. Is the technology compelling enough for them to spend more money to get the devices?

Haley Lovett

Audience Development

School Libraries Cut Databases; Effective Web Research Skills Will Become Paramount

Recent cuts in state school spending are causing school libraries to reduce the availability of expensive databases of journals and periodicals. While this will surely result in making it more difficult for students to complete research assignments, it may also force them to improve their ability to use the Internet effectively.

As Joyce Valenza explains in a recent post for School Library Journal, Pennsylvania has cut its subscription with EBSCO, which hosts electronic databases of publications and journals. EBSCO content has long been a “critical tool” for schools and public libraries throughout Pennsylvania, according to Valenza, who wonders how she’ll “cover the gaps” without additional funding.

Echoing Valenza’s concerns is Kristin Hokanson, a technology integration specialist for Pennsylvania’s Upper Merion School District. State funding for Pennsylvania public libraries in 2010 will be $68 million, compared to $94 million in 2008, while a “specific portion of state funding” for databases like Power Library fell from $11 million in 2009 to $2.9 million in 2010. Hokanson discussed funding cuts, which she suggests “undermines years of effort to connect all schools to the Internet,” with Rick Wills of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “Much of the good and reliable information on the Web is not available for free. The free Web is so cluttered that you can't find things,” Hokanson said.

That the 2011 federal education budget proposal doesn’t include “any additional funding for school libraries” is another dilemma librarians face this year, according to Buffy J. Hamilton, the Unquiet Librarian. Hamilton is a media specialist/teacher-librarian at Creekview High School in Canton, Georgia, who recently blogged about the budget proposal in the form of a letter to President Obama. Instruction of skills like information evaluation and self-filtering “has the most value when taught in the context of the school curriculum and when driven by student’s own inquiry,” Hamilton writes. Thus, cutting funding for school libraries could be catastrophic for students. 


Glenn Miller, the Pennsylvania Library Association’s executive director, summed up what seems to be causing a sense of panic among educators and librarians. “We are talking about dozens of sources of reliable information, vital educational tools that reach tens of thousands of students with little money,” he said, according to Wills.

The challenge then becomes finding free, online resources that are reliable and educational, and that can provide teachers and librarians with an alternative to the expensive databases of years past.

At Dulcinea Media, we’re repositioning our entire company to be one of these alternatives.  The most loyal visitors to our Web sites are librarians, teachers and students in high school and middle school. Thus, a year ago we began to focus our content on these groups.  We presented at two national conferences in the fall and we learned there is a critical need in the school market for free products that promote the effective, safe and responsible use of the Internet, and that ours fit the bill well. Indeed, in a subsequent post, Valenza reviewed our newest product, SweetSearch Biographies, and noted that it “looks especially sweet in these tight database times.” 

It may not be easy for students and educators to transition away from tried-and-true databases, but when students leave the confines of the classroom, they’ll be better equipped to tangle with the mass of information on the Web.

Treating Olympic Fever

The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics are less than two weeks away. This means the average American is on the cusp of a biennial bout of Olympic fever. Symptoms include compulsive medal counting, obsessively following obscure sports, tearing up while watching overproduced NBC athlete biographies and having spontaneous outbursts of national pride.

Thanks to the Web, treatment options are widely—and freely—available. 

A daily dose of Vancouver2010.com will help fans learn about the sports, get tickets, explore the facilities, count medals and much more.

For expanded coverage, including news, exclusive video content, athlete profiles and most importantly, complete TV listings (so you can clear your schedule for your favorite events) visit the NBC Olympics Web site. 

If you’re a social media addict, follow the Vancouver Olympics on Twitter, or become a fan on Facebook.

For a slightly more conventional perspective on Olympics news, check out The New York Times’ Rings blog. The blog aims to report on the athletes, sports and issues of the games, with news, analysis and first-person accounts.

If you follow the instructions above you can expect to make a full recovery after the closing ceremony on Feb. 28, although it’s normal for fans to experience a relapse of Olympic fever after two years.

James Sullivan

Editor

Georgia O'Keeffe and Using the Web to Discover the Early Work of an Artist

Recently, while writing a profile of the great painter Georgia O'Keeffe, I came across a number of interesting details of her life and career. In doing research I learned that in order to have a visual timeline of her career and to keep the prices and demand for her work high, O'Keeffe kept or bought back more than half of all the 2000 or more paintings she created in her lifetime. She also appeared in art exhibitions for which she was not the artist, but the subject; her husband Alfred Stieglitz was an art gallery owner and photographer, and did a series of photographs featuring O'Keeffe (even a few nudes) during their marriage.

Although perhaps most surprising to me was that O'Keeffe did not always paint the forms for which we know her today. The stark white bones contrasting with the desert sky and the colorful over-sized insides of flowers were done in a style that O'Keeffe didn't adopt until she was nearly 40, but those paintings were so overwhelmingly popular that they have somewhat overshadowed her early work.

O'Keeffe's early work was of a more abstract nature. From about 1915 until the mid 1920s, O'Keeffe drew and painted images that expressed a view of the world in stark contrast to the almost photographic paintings of her later years. It was an early series of her charcoal on paper drawings (that were an abstract exploration of line and shape) that first caught the eye of then gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. The Georgia O'Keeffe museum notes that O'Keeffe was ahead of her art colleagues of the time with her interest in abstract work, just as her ultra realistic more famous paintings would show the world another innovative view later on.

One of the great advances in technology over the last decade is the increased availability of online multimedia, such as images and videos. This allows users to not just read about artists, but to experience their work. At the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Web site you can look at examples of her work from different eras in her career, including her abstract period. You would be hard-pressed to encounter many of these pieces in real life.

And if you'd like to visit the work of other well-known artists online, see our article about virtually visiting museums.

Haley Lovett

Audience Development

Inspired by Zinn, Researching Contrary Viewpoints in History

Michael Dwyer/AP Photo

When Howard Zinn was 17, he got his first taste of rebellion in Times Square. Invited to a political rally by a few budding communists from his Brooklyn neighborhood, Zinn watched as policemen rode in on horseback and began beating protestors. He was hit and fell unconscious.

“I woke up sometime later in a doorway, with Times Square quiet again, eerie, dreamlike, as if nothing had transpired. I was ferociously indignant,” Zinn said, according to The New York Times.

The incident sparked Zinn, who went on to serve in World War II, to earn a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University, and write his famous leftist book, “A People’s History of the United States.” Zinn passed away yesterday after suffering a heart attack in Santa Monica, Calif., where he’d been traveling, The Boston Globe reports.

His seminal work is perhaps Zinn’s most profound contribution to American students and teachers; regardless of your opinion of Zinn’s work, his voracious questioning of the status quo is admirable. And perhaps there is a way for budding young revolutionaries to emulate Zinn’s tenacity, and to muster enough fire to champion causes they believe in, regardless of how vehement the opposition. 

Student inspiration could begin with research, and with uncovering a spark of inspiration, whether a memorable Zinn quote or another contrary viewpoint of history. If you know where to look online, such viewpoints can make for excellent classroom discussion points or research paper topics.

To get an idea of where to begin looking, and how to determine which online sources to take seriously, see findingDulcinea’s On This Day article about Germany’s bombing of the city of Coventry on Nov. 15, 1940. More than 500 people were killed and the city’s cathedral was destroyed in the attack. Notably, some people contend that Prime Minister Winston Churchill knew about the attack, but chose to keep it a secret to preserve an intelligence tool.

FindingDulcinea’s article includes an “Opinion & Analysis” section discussing whether Churchill knew about the bombing of Coventry. The section links to a Time magazine review of  “The Ultra Secret” but F.W. Winterbotham, the first to present a theory of Churchill’s actions. An article by Peter J. McIver, alleging that “Churchill Let Coventry Burn to Protect His Secret Intelligence,” posted on The Churchill Centre and Museum at the Cabinet War Rooms, London, is also included. The piece compares Winterbotham’s book with similar works by Anthony Cave Brown and William Stevenson.

Magazines that maintain comprehensive archives, such as Time, Harper’s and Life, are also good places to begin historical research. The Sweet Search results for "Winston Churchill" also impressive: Fordham University, Encyclopedia Britannica, the National Archives and PBS all appear on the first page of results.

Get more tips in our article on the best “Web Sites for Researching History,” and keep Zinn’s spirit of curiosity alive.

Sarah Amandolare

Senior Writer

Musings on Math

For a long time, I loved math. In sixth grade I joined Mathletes, played the “whadyouget” game after every test, and my favorite part of my day—aside from recess—involved sitting in a group rolling a die and playing some obscure game where you added, subtracted and multiplied.As a freshman in high school, I helped with the measurements when we built what we hoped would be the world’s largest Icosahedron. We made a T-shirt of the blueprint. I wore it.

Today, however, I place myself squarely in the camp of women who’d say they aren’t good at math. Naturally, I was fascinated by a study saying that elementary girls scored lower on math tests after spending a school year with female teachers that were anxious about math.

Now, I know that a single case can’t negate a study and that’s not what I’m arguing. I don’t remember which teachers taught me math in elementary school or even if they were good teachers. It’s possible that they were nervous or uninspired. But the math teachers that I do remember were all women and they were, for the most part, bright, fun, confident women who LOVED math, and wanted to share that passion.

Still, at some point in high school, I started to believe that I wasn’t good at math. And while I don’t blame my teachers—though my freshman year teacher was by far the best—I do hold our society somewhat responsible. I know, blame society. That’s like blaming oxygen. But it’s true. Girls are taught that they excel at language and writing, while boys excel at math and science.  And even though statistics have begun to disprove this idea, the truth never came fast enough for some of us. At some point, like a lot of women I know, the thought that I would never be good at math wormed its way into some cranny in my brain, embedded itself, and then decomposed, bits of itself living on beneath the surface.

So, what happens when you don’t believe you’re good at something? You stop trying. And you’re never going to be good at something if you don’t practice at it. Ask Michael Jordan. Ask Norah Jones.

I chose another path. I became fascinated with language, enamored with books, and authors—all of it. That became my thing and I don’t regret it. But who says you can’t have more than one thing.  Teachers, encourage your students, all of them. If you're weak in a subject, practice. Get help. And don't ever let them think, it's because you're a woman.

Shannon Firth
Senior Writer and Audience Development Coordinator

Back to Nature: Explore the Outdoors, Online

Gloomy, dreary, bleak, overcast: New Yorkers could take their pick of adjectives to describe the scene of rain, wind and cold taking place outside their apartment windows this morning.

On days like these, concrete sidewalks and metal-glass buildings blur into the leaden sky, and the city becomes a collage of dreariness.

Should you ever find yourself feeling trapped in such a place, fear not. There is a cure: the Web.

Ironically, the Web has some phenomenal resources for helping people explore the outdoors. On a gray day, planning your next foray into the outdoors could be the pick-me-up you need. Find local hiking trails, climbing areas and rivers, or plan a trip to some of the premier outdoor destinations in the country using the sites below.

Trails.com offers comprehensive trail guides, topographical maps and trail reviews. Its “Trail Finder” tool help users find hiking, biking and backpacking trails based on location. Access to Trails.com’s best content requires paid membership.

Mountain Project is a user-edited database of rock and ice climbing routes across the world. Intuitive, informative and exhaustive, this site is a perfect place for budding climbers to find inspiration, and for advanced climbers to find their next adventure.

Canoe & Kayak magazine has a “Destinations” section where it provides paddlers with links to its articles on featured rivers, organized by region. Articles are a combination of trip report, photo journal and itinerary, and offer a great idea of what to expect on the river.

FindingDulcinea’s National Parks Web Guide provides links to the Web’s best resources for learning about the history of the parks and planning trips.

Happy exploring!

James Sullivan
Editor

New York State Educators, WE WANT YOU!!!

If you are a teacher, librarian or school administrator at a New York public, private or independent middle school or high school, WE WANT YOU!  We are conducting a survey of middle school and high school students’ online research habits and we’d love for you to participate.

The online surveys are short, painless (we don’t ask sensitive questions), easy to understand and anonymous. They should take about 10 minutes to complete.

Please note: Students will not be asked to provide their names, e-mail addresses or any other identifying information.

Our analysis of survey data will be used to create a report that identifies the strengths and weaknesses of students’ online research habits and presents strategies for improvement. 

The report will also include the recommendations of librarians, teachers and our staff of online research experts. We plan to share both our results and our recommendations at several educator conferences this year.

Each participating school teacher or librarian will be given a $40 certificate to Amazon. If you’d like to participate, please let us know by e-mailing shannon.firth@dulcineamedia.com.

"The Buried Life" Task #57 : Spend A Week in Silence

So, “The Buried Life,” a show where four 20-something Canadians try to complete their list of 100 things to do before they die, premiered on MTV this week. The list includes lots of wild stunts such as kissing Rachel McAdams, standing under a plane while it lands and playing basketball with President Obama, which means it’s easy to miss the more wholesome side of this project: For every item they complete, they also must help someone else complete a task of his or her own. So far they’ve furnished the home of a man dying of lung cancer, taught a girl to break dance, bought a computer for an elementary school, and given another group of kids a shopping spree (actually that’s #71).

The most difficult item on the list is arguably to go to space"(#100) or perhaps to fall in love (#78) but a close third might be to spend a week in silence (#57).

These almost-famous idealists may need more than a week to think about what they will do with their stardom. Afterall, getting your 15-minutes or 15 years on camera can be as taxing as it is rewarding. Ask Susan Boyle. They might decide to follow the example of Neil Armstrong, who intentionally eschewed the cameras when his job was finished; however, the chances of that happening are slim.

Still, having time to reflect on their experience, how it’s shaped them, who they've met, and what they plan to do with the rest of their lives could make #57 one of the most gratifying challenges they'll face.

Shannon Firth
Senior Writer and Audience Development Coordinator