This assignment was more fun than I imagined it would be. There was such an abundance of sites listed that I got a little carried away.
Phase #1: To advance my language skills: I signed up at Mango Languages. I'm working through the Italian segment. I like the slide show concept. Being able to see the spelling of a phrase while hearing it is a great way to reinforce learning the material. Some of the slides were silly. One of them was the repetition of a person's name... something to the effect of this is how a man would say Marco (not sure if this is the exact name used). One of the subsequent slides then asks what is the Italian and/or English for Marco. The level is really bare-bones beginner.
I am also investigating the French lesson format. I currently teach non-credit beginning and intermediate level French classes. It may be a good service to offer to newer students. I haven't yet figured out how to jump directly to a higher level. I have the impression that you have to ride the wave of working through the program. This will take some more investigation.
Phase #2: To be practical, I visited Kelly's Blue Book and the Auto Repair Reference Center. Both were relatively straight forward to use.
Phase #3: To see if I could find the plot of a novel that I had read years ago: I explored the Literature Resource Center. I was actually able to find out the storyline of Le Rouge et Le Noir, a novel by Stendhal... and also quite a bit about Stendhal himself. This site would have been a wonderful resource to have when I was in Grad School (Was it really eons ago?).
Phase #4: For fun, I visited NoveList. What a great site! I started by looking up an author. I found not only the title but also the ISBN numbers listed for the books! I've had problems finding ISBNs on the web for this author, so I was quite pleased to have a new place to look. The site also allowed me to read the first chapter of a book I'd not yet read. .., and will soon be putting on hold... unless I find there is a e-book copy available! I spent a lot of time clicking around on this site. The "What we're reading" links were also fun. I will be revisiting this site and mentioning it to any of our novel loving patrons who come in to pick up holds at the Circ desk.
Phase #5: To follow up on a favorite pass time: I tried to explore Kovel's. I was actually quite disappointed with this site. After going through the process of registering, all my searches resulted in a message explaining that searching is free but a fee is required to see the full text of some articles. I'm not sure that I will be going back to that site. I could have gotten better results using a search engine like Google. Maybe the e-zine, for which I am now subscribed will draw me back... maybe not.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I heart Mango! It was my first time experimenting with it and I was able to say 'hello, how are you?' in Japanese when we had dinner at my mother in law's 2 weeks ago. She speaks mostly Japanese so she was delighted. Of course, she launched into a whole conversation that I couldn't follow!
ReplyDeleteOther than Kovel's, it sounds like you had some great success with these databases! I need to be reminded myself to use them more often!