World Book- Student Edition

Today, I looked at World Book Kids. I teach high school students so I kept that in mind as I looked through the site for K-5 students. The first task, search for information on a mammal of my own choosing. First I typed “elephant” into the search box. It pulled up a page of elephant information that included pictures and videos. The videos were the best part! I went back to the beginning of the World Book Kids site and searched using the buttons “Plants and Animals,” “Animals,” Mammals” and finally looking through the list for elephant. I thought that a young student would find this way of searching easy. (Not too easy, just easy.) Here’s what I didn’t like about World Book Kids: Why wasn’t the elephant page divided with headings like “food” or the question “What do elephants eat?” I think I expected there to be buttons on the side that I could click to find out these things about the elephant. I would have also included topics like “Dangers to Elephants” and “Habitat.” Next, I checked World Book Student (grades 5-9). I typed elephant into the search box and was given several results in addition to elephant (elephant seal, elephant shrew, etc.). When I looked at the elephant information I saw this edition has more information on the elephant and it is divided in to sections with headings, making it easy to find specific information. I also noticed there were fewer pictures, but I think it just seemed this way when compared to the amount of written information on the page. World Book Advanced- I researched France. The best part of this- for me (I teach social studies)- was the primary sources. Sometimes just trying to get students to understand the difference between primary and secondary sources is hard. I like that World Book Advanced has the primary sources separated for students. World Book Discover- Here I looked up the subject American Government. This World Book looks like it would be good for ELL students or foreign exchange students (or anyone who may be looking for information in a language other than English). This World Book is featured in two other languages (French and Spanish) and also has a drop down box that you can select another language to have the page translated in to.