New Social Studies Resources from ABDO, Rosen offers CyberSmarts 

Social Studies for the Grade-School Set

New ABDO databases cover
POTUS and the 50 states

If elementary school research topics are like items on your weekly grocery list, presidents and states are the milk and eggs—staples that will always be in demand. It makes sense—aside from hitting social studies curriculum goals, these topics are clearly defined and well-documented—perfect for students who are just getting their feet wet in research. While there are a lot of resources available on presidents and states, ABDO joins the fray with a pair of slick digital databases devoted to these social studies standards.

The United States Presidents and United States Digital Databases
http://my.abdodigital.com

Grade Level Presidents and United States are third to fourth grade products.

Cost Pricing starts at $495 per database for a one-year subscription with reduced rates for three- and five-year commitments. Also available are database and book packages, starting at $1,295. Visit http://ow.ly/6m0pe for more pricing details or call (800) 800-1312 to locate a sales representative in your area.

Overview Based on the companion book series published by ABDO imprint Checkerboard Library, The United States Presidents and The United States are Web-based resources geared for upper-elementary students. Both are comprehensive, covering all 50 states, (along with Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia) and 43 presidents. These digital databases provide some advantages over their print counterparts, with keyword searching, integrated glossaries, and interactive learning games.

Look and Feel Both resources have user-friendly home screens with bold visuals and responsive Adobe Flash-based interfaces. In the world of student research (heck, adult research), nice-looking goes a long way—stale and complicated are often deal breakers. There are some similarities between the two home screens, specifically the search box prominently located at the top of the page.

The United States database makes a nice first impression, opening to a large interactive map with each state identified by its postal abbreviation. Hovering the mouse over an individual state reveals the name and lights it up in blue. Users simply click on a state to read the corresponding article—about as simple and intuitive as navigation gets. Students should have no problems finding what they seek.

The same is true for United States Presidents. The home screen resembles a gallery, with portraits of each president occupying the majority of the screen. Arrows allow users to scroll to their POTUS of choice. This visual method of navigating makes for an inviting introduction. For students who aren’t interested in scrolling through, a link to a standard list of presidents is provided.

How It Works After making a selection from the home screen, both resources present information in a similar way, with text and images arranged how you might see them on the page of a book, with buttons to access specific article sections and additional resources running down the left side of the screen.

Unlike The United States, the Presidents database includes links running under the banner toward the top of the page, directing users to helpful general information on the branches of government, presidential facts and terms, line of succession information, and details on contacting the president by mail. These links are useful, particularly the line of succession chart. I was pleasantly surprised to see bios for everyone on the list, from the Vice President all the way to number 18 in the line of succession: Secretary of Homeland Security. Students will also enjoy the “Contact the President” section, which features an excellent video showing how letters arrive in the Oval Office.

Similar to States, each President article opens to a large image and a nice one-page summary with a box containing “Fast Facts”—birth and death dates, family, political party, years in office, etc. Large “Next” and “Back” buttons at the bottom of the page allow users to navigate through the article one section at a time. Every article includes a timeline, “Did You Know” section with quick, interesting facts, and a photo gallery.

Images are vital to the student research process, and the photo galleries for both databases are a welcome sight. The galleries house all of an article’s images in one place. And photos are just the beginning. The Presidents galleries in particular offer various artifacts, including images, paintings, maps, and primary source documents. The gallery for Abraham Lincoln, for example, offers a scan of the Gettysburg address in rough draft. For United States, I was pleased with the amount and variety of images. Since a truly student-appropriate and user-friendly image search tool continues to be elusive (seriously, if you think you have a winner, call me), these galleries are much preferred to the Russian Roulette otherwise known as Google Image search.

Each States article opens to a general overview, with a list of category buttons on the left. These sections hit on all the details students often search for—major cities, climate, history, industry, natural resources, people, and plants and animals. From my experience, students can be overwhelmed by a wall of text, and the sections do a good job of breaking things into manageable chunks. In this way, these databases have a leg up on print encyclopedias, where text overload is common. Occasionally, terms are highlighted in blue and link to the glossary page, where a definition is provided—a useful (if expected) touch.

I ran into some navigation issues while investigating the “Web resources” for the United States database. While the home screen features a link to additional Web resources for each state, it’s tiny and located at the bottom of the page. It would make sense for this link to appear within the individual articles. As it stands, the user must leave their state article to access the links—not ideal. And unfortunately there were broken links. While it’s a minor aspect of the overall product, these links should be checked on a regular basis and updated as needed.

Wherever students are concerned, additional multimedia elements (specifically video) are welcome. Some of the States articles contain video clips (pulled from that state’s tourism department or National Parks Service) and some don’t—a discrepancy that students will likely notice. Understandably, video is much more rare in the Presidents database.

Although they don’t go much beyond basic knowledge level, the interactive, Flash-based games could potentially be helpful learning tools. “Name the State” challenges players to select the correct name for each state based on shape. Incorrect answers return the player to the list of choices for another try. Many games of this ilk just move on to the next question regardless of a correct or incorrect answer. I like that students must make the correct choice in order to continue. The other learning games follow in this mode. The State icon challenge, which tests users on various state flowers, birds, and the like, also tests the limits of trivial knowledge—it could have been left out.

It’s a small nag, but it would’ve been nice to see a guide for citing information from these resources. This is fairly common practice now in student databases, and it would have been a useful addition here, especially since these are most likely to be used for research purposes.

The navigation being so clear and the contents of the databases so well-defined, I don’t see students using the search function all that often. If they do, they’ll find that a keyword search returns a list of articles containing their search term—highlighted in yellow—within excerpts of articles. The search is basic—there is no ability to filter results or other advanced features. For the intended audience, this is for the best.

For Students, Teachers, and Librarians While this is true of any sound database, teachers will benefit in bringing students to a user-friendly source of credible information. Especially for students in grades 3–5, Internet research gets dicey, as students often aren’t schooled in basic research practices. Both of these resources will save students time and save teachers from worrying about information from questionable sources. Teachers may also like that the text for both products is written at a fourth-grade level. The readability of encyclopedias can vary wildly, and when students run into difficulty reading, it can shut down a fact-finding mission in an instant. This uniform reading level will help minimize this issue.

The biggest benefit of Web-based resources is access, and the ABDO social studies products are no different. The ability for students to conduct quality research from any computer with an Internet connection is a beautiful thing, eliminating much of the aimless online wandering that often leads to frustration and inaccurate information.

Having spent a good chunk of time last year weeding my nonfiction sections, I have a renewed appreciation for materials that are current and relevant. With information updated within the year, United States Presidents and United States are pleasingly up to date, even including current government officials for each state. Here’s hoping ABDO continues to update these resources, offering the latest information to students.

Verdict Look, it’s no secret that much of the information within United States and United States Presidents is available elsewhere, including a number of free online sources. But few freebies present the material in the sort of clear, comprehensive, and age-appropriate way that ABDO has done. I maintain that every school should have a go-to resource for these social studies mainstays—if you don’t have one, these will fit the bill nicely.

http://www.cybersmartsdemo.com

Grade Level Cybersmarts is listed as a K–6th grade product, but will be most effective with third to sixth graders.

Cost Cybersmarts is available in library bound or interactive ebook format. Interactive ebooks: $49.95 for individual titles, $250.00 for the five-book set. Library bound: $15.95 for individual titles, $79.75 for the five-book set. All of these prices reflect a 25 percent school and library discount.

Overview CyberSmarts from Rosen Publishing Online is a five-book series dedicated to online safety for students. While the series is also available in library-bound editions, the interactive ebook format is the real draw here. The Web-based ebooks feature an array of additional features and content, including teaching materials, audio narration, video, and the kicker: a simulated online environment (read: Facebook with training wheels) where students can practice good decision-making skills as they read.

The concept of online safety can be difficult for students to wrap their heads around, and Rosen breaks things down nicely, with each book in the CyberSmarts series covering a different topic: Protecting Your Privacy Online; Using Social Networks; Stopping Cyberbullying; Playing Games Online; and Avoiding Online Predators. While some of these issues have received coverage in the past, others (like playing online games), don’t get much attention. As more students go online and interact with others, these skills become increasingly important.

Look and Feel The interactive version of CyberSmarts is part ebook, part simulated social network. While there’s quite a bit going on, the user interface is clean and easy to use. After selecting a title from the virtual bookshelf, the pages of the book are displayed in the center of the screen, with additional content located in a sidebar on the left. Moving your cursor to the bottom of the page brings up a navigation bar with access to the table of contents, index, and controls to turn pages. The whole operation is responsive—I never found myself waiting for pages or additional content to load.

The top of the page is dedicated to the online simulation and has a vaguely Facebook-ish look, complete with a blue color scheme. This area also contains icons for emails, chat messages, and friend requests (more on that later). The addition of this section means that students will likely have to do a bit of scrolling to read the text and take part in the simulations, but it’s fairly minimal.

If the default layout doesn’t suit your needs, two alternate views are available. Students can minimize distractions by selecting View Full Screen, or click View Book Only to forego the simulations and focus on the text alone.

How it Works Each ebook in the Cybersmarts series is meant to be experienced through the text and the accompanying learning simulations. When used in tandem, the level of student engagement (and therefore, retention of the information) goes way up.

The ebooks hit most of the major areas where students will benefit from some guidance. Each title gives advice on handling tricky situations and always errs on the side of caution. The text is written at a third to fourth grade level and should work well for a wide range of readers. Sentences are basic and clear, with a large font option to increase readability. Page numbers allow readers to see their progress—a small detail that many ebooks don’t include.

To the left of the main text is the Additional Content sidebar, which contains color-coded buttons broken into categories. Vocabulary lists words and phrases that appear on that page. Clicking on a word or phrase opens a pop-up window with a definition and pronunciation guide. Users can also click the “Listen” button to have the definition read to them.

The Learn More section of the sidebar provides additional information about the concepts covered on any page. On a page about online strangers, students can click “What if It Isn’t a Stranger?” to read about how to handle that situation.

Instructional Support lists the available teaching resources for the book. The Resources button brings up a list of websites for further investigation. The sites are a mix of kid-friendly and more teacher- and parent-focused, but all appear relevant and provide some sound learning-extension opportunities.

Sometimes a video will appear in the sidebar. These are typically clips from what appear to be news reports on the various online safety skills.

Having slogged my way through more boring ebook quiz questions than I care to mention, I love how CyberSmarts takes things to the next level with online simulations that mimic real social networks and online communication. The simulations add an impressively engaging element to the ebooks that allow students to immediately practice the skills they learn through the text.

Students begin by creating a profile, for a taste of what that’s like on a real social network. After choosing a username, avatar, and status (from a list of recommended choices), the interactivity begins. When students turn to a new page in the ebook, they begin to receive messages and friend requests, each one relating to skills they learn in the text. For example, on a page on how online predators send friendly messages, a new friend request pops up from a friendly, but unknown source. Students decide whether to accept or deny the request. Making the correct choice (in this case, deny) results in a message explaining that the user made the correct choice. A wrong choice (accept) results in a pop-up giving reasons why this might not be a good decision.

At any time, students can click “Track My Progress” to see how they’re doing. A pop-up screen shows how students answered each of the questions so far and allows users to skip to specific simulations. At the end of the ebook, the number of correct and incorrect decisions is tallied and can be printed off to give to a teacher. If students would like to read without taking part in the simulations, a button at the top changes the view to ebook only. Users can go back to the simulations at any time by switching back to the normal standard view.

It’s difficult for books about online safety to avoid preachiness, and CyberSmarts occasionally drifts into lecture territory, with plenty of “don’t do this” and “don’t do that” speak and stilted text. But the tone also switches to identify with kids, like the Put a Stop to It section of Avoiding Predators Online, which lets the reader know that it isn’t their fault if an online predator is targeting them. This is followed by tips for getting out of the situation.

Clicking the Listen button at the top of each page activates audio narration. The voice is quite natural and a very useful feature for students with low reading skills or visual impairment. It was nice to see that students can also pause the narration in the middle of a page—a small detail, but one that enhances user-friendliness.

For Students, Teachers, and Librarians Students can access any of the CyberSmarts ebooks 24 hours a day online. I was pleased to see that the books are readable on iPad, Nook Color, and Web-enabled phone. For teachers, each ebook comes with printable instructional materials, including discussion questions, key terms, and activity sheets. While promotional materials for CyberSmarts mention available lesson plans, I couldn’t find any.

Librarians should note the accessibility details. If you purchase one of the CyberSmarts ebooks, you own it. There’s no limit to the number of circulations. Although any of the books can be accessed at any time, only three students can read the same book simultaneously. For an additional fee, Rosen offers unlimited, simultaneous access. However, as whiteboards and digital projectors become commonplace in schools, students can still view the books as a class, led by a teacher.

The ebooks can also be accessed by IP authentification, eliminating the need to log in from school computers. As a school librarian, I know that eliminating a password is always a good thing. Teachers and librarians should also note that online safety is a key component of state technology standards—and is required curriculum. This series is one good way to address those standards.

Verdict While the topic of online safety can be a dry one for students (heck, for adults) who just want to connect with friends and have fun, CyberSmarts does a good job of presenting the information clearly and providing unique simulations to reinforce the concepts. For the price (fairly low) and purpose (teaching much-needed skills), CyberSmarts could provide a solid bang for the buck.

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