Week 2 Britannica

Week 2: Brittanica

     I chose to examine the High School level of Britannia School Edition this week. For my country, I chose Bolivia, as my daughter is finishing her graduate program in Cochabamba and I am always looking for new information.  Although limited in ebook resources, there was plenty of other general background information available through all of the other content links.
     Multimedia offered maps, pictures and videos. The best resources were listed under Web's Best Sites. This had travel links (Lonely Planet),  governmental links (CIA The World fact book), and news links (BBC), although the most current article was over a year old.  There would be plenty of material for high schoolers to begin their exploration of a country and pick up keywords and important facts on which to use for further research.
     Over and above the offerings from Britannica itself, there are links through EBSCO to relevant journal articles.  This is probably the best part of the site. Students would be able to gain background knowledge from the homesite and begin looking for relevant articles as well.
     The FAQ section  and the Help sections were a bit helpful, but the Visual Tour would be the best tool for first timers. The Teacher's resources were too young for the high school crowd (grades 3 & up), but could, with some work, be expanded to fit our level. Perhaps the Academic level would have better research resources for high schoolers.  
     Using Workspace is a great tool, as long as you are staying only on Britannica. You can easily set up a "space" to save articles and media. There is a spot to add notes next to each saved item and a tool bar which would be helpful if you need to export or print information.
     Each article has a citation at the end which can be saved in one of many formats. The Learning Materials are not linked to the subject searches, which would be really cool.
     Britannica High School may be a starting point for freshmen. It remains to be seen if Academic might not be a better fit, since our kids are so savvy at MARVEL.