"Do not go where the path leads;
Rather, go where there is no path and leave a trail."
-Emerson

Tomorrow marks the official start of the 30th Iditarod Sled Dog race in Alaska. This year's race is marked by a lack of snow, which is a seemingly vital resource in order for the sleds to make the run to Nome! The solution? Move the race more than 300 miles north to Fairbanks, where there is enough white stuff to make a go of it. If you've never followed the race, you can immerse yourself in its history, culture and real time progress at http://www.iditarod.com.

At the same time, a record number of classes are participating in this years eIditarod project, where they choose mushers to follow, create wall maps of the trail, follow their musher's progress online, and send email to virtual checkpoints and receive responses with challenges for students to complete in their classrooms. You can see examples of what's going on by visiting the project site at http://surfaquarium.com/e_iditarod.htm.

Thank you for all the feedback on the move from a weekly to a monthly newsletter. I appreciate your input and I look forward to moving on together as Information Age educators! This month's edition is on the top research resources for the classroom. I hope you'll find something herein of benefit to you and your students. Thanks to Jerry B for his recommendations on research sites!

Best Information on the Net - http://library.sau.edu/bestinfo/

O'Keefe Library at St. Ambrose University hosts this searchable directory of resources for research, including student and teacher resources, online databases, math tools, people finders, map services, consumer information, best quotes, statistics and much more.

DeskRef - http://ansernet.rcls.org/deskref/

Boasting close to 1,000 links to free reference resources online, DeskRef is a text-based, fast-loading, wide-ranging directory of resources that may well become your students' first stop on conducting online research. The Most Hits feature is an interesting way to rank the search tools by popularity.

Direct Search - http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm

An impressive collection of databases brought together by Gary Price, which aid in finding resources not indexed in the popular search engines and directories. This is a site which can help you stay two steps ahead of your savvy students!

4th and 5th Grade Student Research Resources - http://www.learning.caliberinc.com/index.html

Designed specifically for upper elementary (and easily adaptable for middle school), this site houses all kinds of links to support student research, including every curriculum area, kid-appropriate search tools, and even parent resources for use at home.

GPO Multi-Database Search - http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/multidb.html

The Government Printing Office presents this incredible collection of information on every aspect of the United States government across multiple databases. There are bills, budgets, manuals, histories, calendars, and much more.

Infomine - http://infomine.ucr.edu/

Beyond K-12 research resources, this database includes a broad range of educational collections. Government, science, social science, maps, regional resources and visual and performing arts are all covered here.

Infonation - http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/infonation/e_infonation.htm

An easy-to-use, two-step database that allows you to view and compare the most up-to-date statistical data for the Member States of the United Nations. Choose up to 7 countries at a time and then select the data fields you want to compare - very quick and easy.

iTools - http://www.itools.com/

Formerly Research It, iTools is a very thorough page offering tools for reference work, languages, library work, geography, financial research, shipping and mailing info, and educational listservs. It uses a clean, no nonsense approach ideal for education.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library - http://lib-www.lanl.gov/

The Los Alamos National Laboratory uses computer and network technology to allow students to a wealth of digital science information sources worldwide, any time, anywhere. This is a searchable collection of very technical information.

Needle in a Cyberstack - http://home.mchsi.com/~albeej/

John Albee's unique information finder specifically for teachers! Easy to use table format. There are dozens of interlinked pages including Books & Book Reviews, the Best of Curriculum, alphabetized Medical and Scholarly Research Pages. If you can't find it here, where?

News Trawler - http://www.newstrawler.com/nt/NT_home.html

NewsTrawler is a Parallel Search Engine for news archives. Search for articles from the archives of hundreds of online information sources from around the world. Students can research news items for projects; teachers can use it as a research aid for teaching.

THOMAS - http://thomas.loc.gov/

The best single source for studying congressional history, pending legislation and activity by committee in the House and Senate of the United States. Hosted by the Library of Congress, you can search by term or bill number or use the quick reference directory to research your government at work.

Find More Great Resources at

 

Next Month's Topic: "Teacher Networking"

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You can email URL's of high quality sites which may be of interest to our readers as well as new topic ideas and input and feedback!

 

 

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