Who uses the databases?

Looking at the discussion about databases, it sounds like mine isn't the only district that pays for databases that no one seems to use. A few people mentioned today (July 20) that the lack of training for staff on how to use the resources is a major problem, especially considering the amount of money that must be spent on the databases. As Joanne indicated, this would be a good place for the CBAM model to be applied.

That's what I thought too, which is why is used it for my assignment 3. What I found, though, was not only did no one seem to use it, but no one seemed to know about it. As I explained in my discussion post, "When I asked the TL for the logins for the databases we have, she gave me ones for World Book and EBSCO, but said that she never uses either because EBSCO doesn't have much in French, and World Book is lacking Canadian content." I was worried when she said this, because the project I was going to suggest my colleague revamp was a research project about Canadian provinces. I didn't have a problem there, however, although this isn't necessarily a good indicator of Canadian content for areas like art and culture.

Another point: no where on the school website is mentioned the Encyclopedia of British Columbia, which we also get. I didn't know to ask about it when I did my project, but I found it on the district website when I was looking into databases further for the related lesson. The TL didn't mention it at all when I was talking to her, and I can't help but wonder why, if we're worried about Canadian content, we are not using it. It is at a higher reading level than is generally useful, but it would be still be worth knowing about, I would think.

It seems so unfortunate that educators are not able to use/willing to use/aware of these resources. For one thing, it doubles the amount of time you have to do library research during the week, because your computer lab periods are more useful than a dabble on Wikipedia.

Overall, I think, this is going to be one of the big ideas I take from this course. Ways to better use the internet for researching are available and valuable, and I intend to teach them to my students. This means not only the skills to use Wikipedia properly, but also all the other available tools and resources that we have (and that the district pays for!)