findingDulcinea

Sweet Sites | Don't Get Fooled Again: Know Fact from Fiction

Know how to tell truth from fiction with help from these three Web sites.
 
Keep your e-mail inbox free of viruses, scams and hoaxes with help from Purportal.com, "debunking bunk since 2001." The site allows you to search various reputable databases and sites that collect information about urban legends, sneaky ways of parting you from your money and various bits of code you just don't want on your computer.  Sources include Snopes, Symantec and Fraud Watch International.
 
Continue on the factual path with Scirus, a search engine for scientific information that indexes journals, scientists' personal pages and coursework. A sister site, SciTopics, offers "research summaries" on a variety of different subjects in the sciences and the humanities, such as chemistry, environmental science and philosophy.
 
Librarians built Infomine, a collection of databases, electronic journals, books and other resources for university-level students and staff. It includes links to both paid and free content, and offers bibliographic information about each site.

Find your own "eureka" sites using SweetSearch.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

If you like this newsletter, sign up for our weekly dose of travel insights or our weekly education-themed picks here.

Who Wants to Be an Internet Expert?

Back in the olden days, people talked about the list of books they wanted to read but would probably never get to. Although the lists might have been long, they may have been more manageable than we realized. With the Web, we’re getting a seemingly infinite number of articles thrown at us every minute. It’s hard to make a reading list—never mind get through it.

Fortunately, findingDulcinea, your friendly, neighborhood Internet librarian, has a solution: Our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters. Or, as we like to think of them: Expertise in Your Inbox.

* The Daily Dulcinea: A dose of knowledge spotlighting a notable biography or historical event. On Saturday, we'll send you "5 Must-Reads You May Have Missed" during the week.
* Weekly Travel Newsletter: a virtual tour of under-the-radar vacation destinations.
* Weekly Education Newsletter: a curation of Web sites and tools that aim to empower teachers, librarians, parents and students.
* Sweet Sites: a weekly e-mail of Web sites that will aid your research, up your Internet savvy and expand your mind.

Sign up here, now!

Your desire to become an Internet expert is probably reason enough for you to sign up for one or all of these newsletters. But if you need more incentive, we've created a list of reasons:

1. Our "On This Day" and Happy Birthday e-mails are guaranteed to tell you the correct date, every day.
2. There's no point to that new smartphone if no one is e-mailing you, right? We'll e-mail you. We promise.
3. We are more consistent/less demanding than the boy/girl/client/gig you wish was e-mailing you.
4. Getting our travel newsletter is like traveling, except you can bring more than 3 fluid ounces with you when you read it.
5. Our weekly "Sweet Sites" e-mail is not as bad for your teeth as other sweets. Nor will it get your keyboard sticky when you surf the Web.
6. If you lie and say you found one of our Sweet Sites yourself, we'll never find out.
7. Visit our Religion and Spirituality Web Guide to deal with the guilt you'll feel about stealing credit for our awesome work.

Yom Hashoah: Struggling to Remember

The Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem (Photo: Sebastian Scheiner/AP)

A phrase frequently associated with the Holocaust is “Never Forget.” It’s become more poignant as the majority of the survivors of those terrible times are now no longer with us. While we may eventually gain some intellectual understanding of the events, emotionally engaging with such a monstrous event is difficult without some kind of personal connection.

As the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I can claim a certain personal connection. I am deeply aware of how improbable it is that I even exist. My mother is a Hungarian-American Jew who was born in Budapest in 1944. During her infancy, my grandfather was in a camp, and my grandmother sought safety and shelter for herself and my mother in various safe houses established by the Red Cross and by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.

Of course, my mother has no memory of those days, and sadly, my brave grandmother died shortly after I was born. My grandfather survived the camps, and when I was a teenager, he tried to share some of his experiences with me. He died about 10 years ago, and now those memories are lost, too. My grandfather’s one surviving friend (who herself was dramatically saved by Raoul Wallenberg’s intervention) is in her 90s.

Soon, there will be no one left to share a first-person account, and so much has already been forgotten. All we will have is the historical record and the mass of personal narratives left behind by those who could serve as witnesses. As the Holocaust recedes into the past, we must do what we can to continue to make it real, to understand how genocide occurs and to learn how we can stop atrocities occurring today and in the future.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Congress has officially set aside the entire week of April 19 to remember the events of the Holocaust. FindingDulcinea has created a Web page of resources to help you learn and share information about the Holocaust. Forge your own connection, however tenuous it may be. Help make sure we will not forget.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Using EncontrandoDulcinea as a Spanish Language Learning Tool

Even though encontrandoDulcinea is primarily designed for people who speak Spanish as a first language, or who would rather receive their news and information in Spanish, this bilingual site is also an excellent online resource for those who are trying to learn Spanish or improve their fluency in it.

EncontrandoDulcinea covers stories from the fields of science, politics, nature, health, history, art and international relations, and offers entertaining and informative articles for adults as well as educational material for younger audiences. The “On This Day” feature, for instance, highlights historical events that are of particular interest to the Latino community. As the articles are written in Spanish, they also provide an opportunity to practice reading in Spanish while learning history at the same time.

Considering the exponential way in which bilingualism in the United States is growing, it’s no wonder that more and more people are interested in improving their language skills.

The Instituto Cervantes, a nonprofit organization sponsored by the Spanish government, is devoted to enhancing the teaching of the Spanish language and advancing the culture of Spanish speaking nations. In the U.S., the Institute has venues in New York and Chicago. Whether you’re taking a Spanish course such as the ones offered at the Institute, or are practicing the language on your own, the articles that encontrandoDulcinea offers can be a great source of language practice.

Our Web Guide to Learning Spanish is also a valuable resource for those looking to learn Spanish or improve their skills via the Web.

Sweet Sites | Eye on the Sky (and Under Ground): Sites on Natural Disasters and Emergency Preparedness

Alaska's Mt. Redoubt (Photo: GeoEye Satellite Image/AP)

A few short weeks ago, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana appeared on national television and decried the waste of spending money to observe volcanoes in Alaska. Then Alaska’s Mt. Redoubt erupted. Several times. The current flood threat in North Dakota and Minnesota make it clear that keeping an eye on the situation is vital to preserving people and property from danger and damage.

Floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes: Who can keep up? Well, research centers across the globe are dedicated to that very purpose, and many of them provide up-to-date information on disaster news, prevention and relief.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center provides an animated map of severe weather patterns moving across the United States, storm reports and FAQs about tornadoes and derechos (windstorms).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Emergency Preparedness and Response helps you lay out a general disaster plan for you and your family, and provides preparedness steps for specific (and currently occurring) hazards, such as volcanic eruptions, floods and blizzards.

The University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center doesn’t appear to have much useful information on its own site, but it does link to several other disaster research centers across the globe, including the Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre (ABUHRC), “Europe's leading multidisciplinary academic hazard research centre,” and the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center.

Learn more about one of nature's most dramatic events in our feature article "Nature Wages War: Volcanoes."

Find your own "eureka" sites using SweetSearch.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Notches on the Ladder to Internet Literacy

In mid-February, the Sunday New York Times wrote about Stephanie Rosalia, a New York City public school librarian who teaches students how to use the Internet effectively. Because that is our mission, it was no surprise that half our staff e-mailed the article to me.

What did surprise me, however, was that the article was the most e-mailed on the New York Times Web site, that it received 75 comments and that it was the subject of 100 blog posts. We have long preached that students will never realize the full benefit of the Internet by using search engines alone. Until we saw the tremendous response garnered by the New York Times article, we didn’t know that much of the world agrees with us.

And this week, we received the best evidence yet that we are succeeding in our mission to show teachers and students how to find credible and comprehensive resources online. First, an article authored by PC World appeared on MSN and named findingDulcinea one of the readers’ choices for “Sites That Will Matter in 2009." The article said findingDulcinea offers “clear value as a teaching aid for kids.”

A day later, we received an even more stellar review from Joyce Valenza, Ph.D., a leading technology writer, in the prestigious School Library Journal. The review described findingDulcinea as "[r]eminiscent of About.com ….with its human guides and structured, contextualized presentation of results, FindingDulcinea offers us more and far more attractively." Even better, Dr. Valenza then asked and answered the question "What does FindingDulcinea do right? It organizes. It evaluates. It creates context. It is conscious of design. It gets media."

I couldn’t have written it better myself. For schools that are not fortunate enough to have a Stephanie Rosalia on staff, findingDulcinea is the next best thing.

Mark Moran
Founder and CEO

Sweet Sites | Don't Know Much about U.S. History? The Government Does

If you're looking for information about American history, you might want to start with resources sponsored by the U.S. government.

The official FBI site has quite a lot of information on American crime. The history section tells the story of the FBI and its role during major periods of American history, from its origins in the early 20th century to today. The headline archives index allows you to browse articles by type of crime.

For more American history resources, consult the National Archives Web site; you can browse the site by topic.

If the government doesn't give you what you want, visit The Internet Public Library; it's got tons of useful links, which can be browsed by subject and subcategories within each subject.

"Women Who Dared" is our tribute to the women in American history. Learn about a month's worth of pioneering American women, including Melissa Etheridge, Marie Curie and Eleanor Roosevelt, in this special Women's History Month section.

Learn about more key players in U.S. history, including the Vikings, Columbus, and Native Americans using the sites in our U.S. History Web Guide.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor
findingDulcinea

Find your own "eureka" sites using SweetSearch.

Introducing encontrandoDulcinea, a Cultural News Source for the Hispanic Reader

encontrandoDulcinea, findingDulcinea’s sister site in Spanish, has been live on the Web for about six months, steadily growing in the wealth and variety of its content and expanding its reach with a host of relevant and educational news and features.

Adding to our selection of more than 60 research guides, encontrandoDulcinea now includes profiles, interviews and an educational series.

The material featured in encontrandoDulcinea is intended for bilingual readers who prefer to have Web content delivered to them in Spanish but who understand English well enough to make use of the original recommended sites. The site covers topics and materials that are educational and particularly relevant for the Spanish-speaking community of the United States.

Given the exponential growth of the Hispanic population in the U.S., as evidenced in this recent article by the Associated Press, bridging the language barrier online is more important than ever.

The content provided by encontrandoDulcinea helps to reach out to those who aren’t entirely fluent or highly proficient in English. By creating a bridge over the language barrier, encontrandoDulcinea makes educational and enriching material available to readers who feel more comfortable approaching it in Spanish.

Anita Gutierrez-Folch
Senior Writer
encontrandoDulcinea

Keep up to date with encontrandoDulcinea by following us on Twitter!

Sweet Sites | Magazines, Journal Articles, Books and More

Nothing beats a library, but know before you go using the online catalog WorldCat.

Thanks to my last Sweet Sites entry, "Global Resources for Searching Local News," you should now have just about all the newspaper access that you’ll ever need. Here are three more sites that can help temporarily quench your thirst for reading material.

Search for magazine articles that are available for free online via MagPortal. A page on the site lists the magazines available and what articles have been indexed.

If you’ve just got to keep up with the latest scientific discoveries, you’ll find every research paper published in a NIH-funded journal at PubMed Central.

Why wait to go the library to see if they have what you want on the shelf? Visit WorldCat and get information about books, CDs, videos, news articles and digital collections held by more than 10,000 libraries worldwide.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

You can get this blog entry delivered to your e-mail inbox every Monday with our Sweet Sites newsletter. Sign up for it here!

Find your own "eureka" sites using SweetSearch.

Today is National Grammar Day (and Twitter is No Excuse!)

Get this picture on a t-shirt at Allfavourites.com.

So you can fire off a three-paragraph e-mail in one minute and condense a day’s worth of thoughts into a few 140-character tweets. But how’s your grammar? Modes of communication like e-mail, instant messaging, texting and Twitter are changing a lot of things, like the way we get information, how we consume it and most importantly on National Grammar Day, how we compose it. Today is a chance to treat every utterance like it can’t be spell-checked by Microsoft Word.

The official site of National Grammar Day has a simple message for all those who want to “get involved” in the celebration: “Speak well! Write well! And on March 4, march forth and spread the word. We want people to think about language and how it can be used best.”

One way you can “march forth” is by challenging yourself with the University of California Press’s copy editing quiz, taken from their title “The Copyeditor’s Handbook.” You may feel like you’re back in the classroom where you first took the SAT. But even if you get the answers wrong, you’ll get an explanation of the right answers.

Grammar Girl hosts podcasts about common grammar and usage mistakes. Confused about “which” and “that”? “Between” vs. “among”? Need proofreading tips? These and more topics are covered in a format that’ll give you a nice break from screen-based reading.

Refer back to a good, old-fashioned book, “The Elements of Style,” for trustworthy tips and explanations.

The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar created the annual SPOGG Awards to expose the users of the worst grammar in the country, awarding both a person and a U.S. city. View this year’s winners and runners-up here. One runner-up in the person category was Courtney Love who, SPOGG says, “generates so many errors per inch of text on her blog that even the best instruments known to grammar scientists have failed to record them all.”

Finally, celebrate at the end of a hard day of perfect grammar with a Grammartini, courtesy of National Grammar Day sponsors SPOGG and MSN Encarta:

1. Pour two-and-a-half ounces of gin, a half-ounce of dry vermouth and several ice cubes into a martini shaker.
2. Shake. (The shaker—not your body or your dog's paw.)
3. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with an olive. If you must, use a lemon twist instead. The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar likes olives, however. When life hands us lemons, we make lemonade.

Check out our Web Guides to Elementary School English and Middle School English for links to some quality sites and tips on English that you can impart to the young people you know.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Libraries: How to Use, Access and Appreciate Them via the Web

The Seattle Library

Online libraries may not be as majestic as the real thing, as this photo collection of libraries around the world proves, but they are a great presence on the Internet that everyone should be familiar with.

While soaring through the Internet via StumbleUpon, I found the article “100 Extensive University Libraries from Around the World that Anyone Can Access” from a blog called College Degree. Divided into categories including digital libraries, international digital libraries, texts, medical libraries, legal libraries and more, this is an excellent list for anyone doing research online.

Now, how to conduct research online? These  resources will help you get your bearings.

A Research Guide for Students is a simple, text-based Web site divided into chapters. It includes search boxes for multiple search engines, citation guidelines, quotation guidelines, “How to Survive the Internet Unscathed” and many more.

The Librarians’ Internet Index catalogs quality, research-fit Web sites on hundreds of topics. On LII I found BrightPlanet’s “Guide to Effective Searching of the Internet,” a detailed PDF that helps you become fluent in using search engines. LII’s list of specialized encyclopedias has some interesting selections, too.

Our Guide to Web Search is a wellspring of research tips, linking to sites that discuss Web site credibility, choosing a search engine, using web directories and scholarly resources, and much more.

Journals may seem like a luxury bestowed to university and college students, but everyone can benefit from the Directory of Open Access Journals, (DOAJ) which as of today had 3,895 journals in its database.

Online Education Database’s “Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources” takes you well past standard search options.

Finally, use Libweb to find a library near you.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Celebrating Charles Darwin at 200

Today we published a biography of Charles Darwin in honor of his birthday. But today also happens to be his 200th birthday, making 2009 a special opportunity for scholars and fans of Darwin to reexamine and celebrate his work. (The University of Cambridge, for example, is hosting a festival on Darwin this summer.)

How did Darwin become the legacy that he is today? Senior Writer Isabel Cowles writes that, like another mastermind, Albert Einstein, Darwin “was never a great student.” But he was an “avid collector of beetles” and loved the outdoors. Following his naturalist passion, Darwin accepted a position on the HMS Beagle to examine and collect specimens across the world. The observations he made while stationed on the Galapagos Islands became “The Origin of Species,” the foundation of the theory of evolution.

His work was not unanimously praised when it was first published. But today prominent figures emphasize how important Darwin is to science. For example, Sir David Attenborough has argued, “Evolution is not just a theory. It is a historical fact like any other historical fact.”

In a New York Times editorial on the bicentenary, author Verlyn Klinkenborg writes that Darwin’s explorations are in effect the “cornerstone of what we know about life on earth.”

Learn more about Darwin's work with the American Museum of Natural History’s online exhibit on Darwin.

You can even become friends with the digital effigy of Charles Darwin on Facebook and find multiple Web sources listed on his profile, linking to interesting articles about the man and his work.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Inspiring Kids and Teens to Become Volunteers

A teenage volunteer helps a special needs child in the program  Friendship Circle. (Rich Schultz/AP)

There’s a good reason why colleges like applicants with community service under their belts. Volunteerism is an often life-changing experience that helps young people mature, work with people they might never normally meet, see new places and respond to a higher calling, as President Obama implored us all to do during a commencement address to Wesleyan University’s Class of 2008. Below are sites that can help kids, teenagers and young adults shape their adult selves through volunteering.

DoSomething.org is a nonprofit organization that harnesses the Web to bring young people a large, searchable database of volunteer opportunities and funding sources to get their ideas off the ground. The organization gives $500 grants to motivated teens and young adults, and awards $100,000 to the best volunteer project proposal of the year.

Idealist.org’s Kids & Teens section is “an essential resource for kids who want to start a project of their own, or connect with youth organizations already involved in human rights, the environment or the arts,” says Senior Writer Sarah Amandolare in the article “Volunteer Opportunities for Kids.” The article lists a few more sites like Idealist.org and DoSomething.org.

Our Alternative Spring Break Web Guide points out that local or remote volunteer opportunities can be an enlightening way for a student to spend a couple of weeks. Find inspiration and help planning your volunteer trip in this guide.

One such travel volunteerism site is Global Works, which integrates service work with cultural immersion to give teens an alternative to more typical summer activities. Language immersion trips are also available, as are custom-designed trips for groups of 14 or more.

Learn more in the Philanthropy and Nonprofits Web Guide.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Web Sites Every College Applicant Should Know About

When I was about to head off to college in 2001, I knew of only a handful of Web sites that could help me prepare for the next four years. Today there are many more. In researching an article called “8 Sites for College Dorm Survival” for findingDulcinea, I came across several sites that can help all the Web 2.0 generation kids heading to school in the next year or two.

Unigo promises to make the college decision-making process easier for high school students. With its staff and user-submitted reviews of several hundred top U.S. colleges and universities, the site is poised to be one of the most content-rich college review sites on the Web. Accompanying the reviews are on-campus videos featuring interviews and tours, and helpful articles on all things collegiate.

EDUInReview  collects valuable educational resources from around the Web, publishes articles and reviews and otherwise helps students get their bearings on loans, scholarships and decision-making.

DormDelicious is a blog with a variety of articles on improving one’s quality of dorm life. Get inspired to decorate, learn to love your roommate(s), browse pictures of fellow co-eds’ rooms and watch videos that peer into dorm culture around the country.

Surviving College Life is another blog with sage advice from Jamie, a recent UC San Diego college grad, about all aspects of college living. Jamie links to recommended products, blogs and sites around the Web, and boasts quality original writing that will comfort many.

High school juniors and seniors will appreciate our Web Guide to Applying to College, which has sections on entrance exams, applications and entrance essays, choosing a college and steps in the application process.

Those about to start their journey should check out the Web Guide to College Life, with a few of the sites mentioned above and many more on dorm life, health and nutrition, studying and staying organized, and more.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Sweet Sites | January 30, 2009

A key mission of findingDulcinea is to help people search better. Thanks to our new search engine, SweetSearch, that mission has become easier than ever before, because it only includes sites that we at findingDulcinea have vetted. In this new weekly series, which will also appear as a newsletter starting next week, I'll bring you some "eureka" finds from around the Web.

Both Virginia Heffernan of The New York Times and I love TED.com. The site offers high-quality videos of absolutely fascinating talks by innovators in technology, science, politics and the arts.

I also find all kinds of great stuff on university library Web sites. For example, the University of Pennsylvania Library offers an extensive list of useful research links on a HUGE variety of topics. And many universities, such as Harvard, are digitizing at least part of their collections and making them available on the Web.

A link I found at the Harvard site led me to Old Bailey Online. The site offers 250 years' worth of bizarrely fascinating information about the proceedings of London's chief criminal court, as well as tons of historical information about London society.

I love being an intrepid Internet explorer in search of buried Web treasure, and I promise to share what I find, instead of keeping it to myself.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Great Web Tools for Teachers

The day in the life of a teacher is, simply stated, hectic. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the demands of the teaching day, there’s hope. Use the following Web resources to get organized, plan class lessons, stay connected with other teachers and find what you’re looking for, without leaving the confines of your classroom.

CalendarFly is the ideal resource for coordinating your professional (and personal) life. Post school activities, homework assignments, test information and other agendas on a calendar, and share it with teachers, parents, coaches, administrators and your students to keep them updated with your countless classroom events.

Check out Classroom 2.0 to tap into new resources for educators. Collaborate with teachers from around the world, share ideas, pose questions and find new (and possibly very creative) classroom activities.

Discovery Education’s Lesson Plans Library is the answer to overcoming the dreadful feeling of not having an engaging lesson planned for your class. Luckily, it covers grades K-12 and is categorized by subject to make your life that much easier.

FindingEducation is our ultimate educator’s tool to help you find the best online resources, share them with your students, make assignments and write quizzes. Additionally, when you or your students need to research a topic, you can use findingDulcinea through findingEducation to locate the most comprehensive and intelligent material available on the Web.

Jen O’Neill
Writer and Education Outreach

For even more education resources, use our Web Guide to Education to find e-learning tools, additional lesson plan ideas, parent resources and more.

Women Firsts in 2008

As most of us know, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were big achievers in 2008. But there are many other women from around the world who set milestones this year. FindingDulcinea teamed up with WowOwoW, otherwise known as The Women on the Web, to profile 20 such women, including Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, New Hampshire's first female senator Jeanne Shaheen, Clinton, Palin, and 16 more. 

Visit WowOwoW's photo essay to see pictures and learn essential facts about the women.

Visit findingDulcinea's special section, 2008 Firsts for Women, to learn more about each of these women's lives and how they achieved their unique accomplishments.

Liz Colville

Senior Writer

Audience Development

Five Must-See Lectures

TED.org, which is full of free lectures.

You no longer have to attend expensive conferences or tune in to a live broadcast to experience the intelligence and expertise of the world's brainiest economists, reporters, authors and entrepreneurs. Below are five recent talks that will enrich your mind from the comfort of wherever you and your computer are sitting.

1. Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success

The author of "Blink" and "The Tipping Point" returns with "Outliers," an inspiring look at how upbringing, personality, fate and thousands of hours of hard work commingle to create the world's most successful people. This lecture is that book in a nutshell.

2. This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money

In audio rather than video format, this talk between This American Life producer Alex Blumberg and NPR's business and economics correspondent Adam Davidson is credited around the Web as one of the best explanations of the subprime mortgage crisis and how it connects to Wall Street's recent failures.

3. The New Yorker Festival: The Next Generation of Fashion

At the 2008 New Yorker Festival, three top graduates from three design schools talk about their own work, their inspiration, and the future of fashion.

4. TED Conference 2008: Samantha Power: Shaking Hands With the Devil

At the 2008 TED Conference, Power, who heads Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights, gives a lecture on genocide based on her book about Sergio Vieira de Mello, a UN diplomat who worked with dictators to protect human rights and was killed in a bombing in Iraq in 2003.

5. FreedomFest 2008: Charles Murray: "Real Education"

Murray, author of "Human Accomplishment" and "The Bell Curve," discusses his book about the American education system, including proposals about how to improve it.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Site of the Day: The Week in Rap

A new Web site from the creators of Flocabulary.com, a music project initially intended to expand students’ vocabulary by teaching them rap songs, is now also making current events more accessible by rapping about them. The new site is called The Week in Rap.

In their recent election edition, the rappers riffed about the day’s importance from a historical perspective, explaining how far America had come. In the next beat, however, they touched upon the challenges ahead, such as the country’s soaring unemployment and the divisive issue of gay marriage in California.

The listener’s experience is enhanced visually with a montage, and links embedded in the song lyrics lead to articles and videos that explain the stories in more detail. Cofounder Blake Harrison told CBS that kids want to learn but many students lack access to news that engages them: “It’s hard to care about something that you don’t know about.”

Shannon Firth
Writer

Simple Things to Teach Your Kids

Shannon Pifko

Many parents often lament the fact that their children aren’t born with instruction manuals. After all, there’s a lot kids need to know, and it’s not always obvious how to make sure they learn it. While we haven’t found any instruction manuals online, we have tracked down some Web sites that offer parents some pointers on how to teach kids a few of the simpler things they’ll need to learn as they grow up.

FamilyEducation contains tips about teaching children how to identify money and make change, and even has advice on helping older kids understand what it means to use checks and how a checking account works.

PBS Kids offers exercises to help kids work with numbers and improve their listening skills.

Discovery Health provides some insight on how to teach kids good manners.

Lindsey Chapman
Writer

See findingDulcinea’s Back to School section to help your kids learn about a variety of other topics, including biographies of notable individuals and historical events. You'll also find news articles and web guides relevant to parents.