Eagle Eyes

Mark your calender to attend this year’s Science Alive at the St. Joseph County Public Library on Saturday, February 3, 2007. This is the 15th annual fair and if you have never attended, you are in for a treat! Feature presentations in the Colfax Auditorium – Lower Level will include presentations from the South Bend Police Department K-9 Unit demonstrating Nose, Nose: Secrets of the K-9 – how the sense of smell is used by police dogs in tracking drugs, explosives and people (10:30 am) and Meet the Screech Owl and find out Owl You wanted to Know about the might mouse hunter and its life and habits (1:30 pm). There will be a presentation at 9:30 am of popular chemistry demonstrations from past Science Alive! events (9:30 am), learn about service dogs at 2:30 pm, discover some of our local creepy crawler reptile and amphibian residents at 3:30 pm as well as HealthWorks interactive Good Health Game Show at 12:30 pm and science educator Larry Wirtz and his Magical World of Science at 11:30 am. There will be interactive exhibits from 9 am to 4 pm on all three floors of the library with something for kids of all ages. The Countdown to Science Alive! starts this Thursday, January 25, with a kickoff at the Main Library. Other presentations will take place through the end of next week at all of the SJCPL Branches.

The air is electric with the buzz of the 8th grade students working on the development of their own web-pages using iWeb under the direction of Mrs. D. Their sites will eventually be linked to our school website.

During last week’s library time the 8th grade classes used the computer lab with Mrs. G and had the chance to explore some research sites that are easily overlooked but offer something a bit different than just a /Google/ search! Some of the sites we explored were Quintura for Kids, which gives results in a cool “visual cloud,” KartOO which is a meta-search engine that also presents its results in a visual display and the Internet Public Library-Kidspace which always offers good resources. The Internet Public Library also offers an interesting /cluster visualization/ of results when you use their “grok it” option to search. We reviewed KidsClick!, the librarian-reviewed search directory for kids which can help narrow down a topic as well as the Librarians’ Internet Index and INSPIRE – Indiana’s Online Research Library.

If the students’ enthusiasm for their topics is any indication of the quality of their work, we should have some outstanding web-pages to view! Happy searching!