Winter 2011
New SIRS content, context, and connections
At ProQuest, we've continued to invest in technology and content throughout 2010. This includes the recent release of the all-new ProQuest platform. We've re-imagined the way to discovery... to finding, creating, and sharing knowledge.
Our ProQuest platform isn't the only resource we've enhanced in 2010. In recent months, the SIRS team has added:
- More than 20,000 new documents across all sources, a 10% increase in total documents (including a nearly 20% increase in total pictures).
- SIRS Issues Researcher MyAnalysis interactive research guide that walks researchers through six stages of information literacy.
- SIRS Discoverer Science Fair Explorer, a highly visual interactive that helps students identify an exciting science fair project topic, and quickly connects them to age-appropriate project guides and additional editor-selected content.
- SIRS Discoverer Skills Discoverer, a highly visual interactive that connects to editorially-selected educational websites, including those with game-like activities and challenges that engage users as they practice skills in curriculum-based subject areas, at school or at home.
- New standards alignments for International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme Curriculum, and currently working on two additional core standards sets.
SIRS Issues Researcher
Adds Content, Context, Connections
More Content!
Leading Issues Topic Overviews
For clear, concise information about all Leading Issues, start here. SIRS Issues Researcher now offers Topic Overviews for 300+ Leading Issues.
These editorially created and compiled Topic Overview pages deliver concise analysis, perspectives and quick links to best-of information needed to build foundation. Expand on understanding of each issue through unique multimedia, essential questions, critical thinking questions and more!
More Context!
Pair of NEW SIRS Leading Issues
Should gays be allowed to serve openly in the military?
Should the time students spend in school each day be extended?
SIRS frames two new Leading Issues in context for students with a clear, editorially-organized structure that helps users understand its historical origins, related issues, global perspectives, and the essential questions under debate.
Access "Gays in the Military" and "School Schedule" through any of the various Leading Issue browse features on the home page of SIRS Issues Researcher.
More Connections!
SIRS Note Organizer
Our Note Organizer connects research to the curriculum by enabling users to organize, create and present research without leaving SIRS!
This popular tool is newly enhanced with even more great options for font style, outline, source types and manipulating boxes and text.
SIRS Research Lesson Plan
Fad Diets | Feast & Famine
December and all the celebrations that include the traditional holiday foods has come to an end. Welcome January—National Diet Month—which starts the long and painful withdrawal from feasting and forcing us to face the trauma of clothing that may no longer fit.
Yes, January is the time when most of us pull out the scales, take a deep breath, and buckle down to dieting in hopes of getting rid of weight gained over the holiday season.
January means the aisles that once held holiday candy and chocolates have now been stocked to the hilt with diet foods and diet aids. Why you ask? Because the start of a new year provides millions of Americans with the motivation for personal improvement resolutions that most often focus in losing weight.
Have your students investigate (lesson plan) both sides of the surge in dieting and types of diets spawned by New Year resolutions.
SIRS Leading Issues provides the content and unique critical thinking process to help students answer this question: "Is a low-carbohydrate, high protein diet an effective way to lose weight?"
One Year Ago
SIRS Leading Issues
Natural Disasters
(Earthquake @ Haiti, Jan. 2010)
The report includes open access to our CultureGrams PDF reports for both countries, available for a limited time.
Spotlights & Challenge Quests
What is your favorite book? Is it an adventure story, an animal tale, a fairy tale, a funny book, or maybe a spooky story?
Book Blitz Month is a great time to read your favorite book again and to discover new books to love! January's Spotlight of the Month features lots of wonderful books and their authors.
When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a "War on Poverty" in January 1964, the U.S. poverty rate was about 19 percent. The president's comprehensive legislative campaign included job training, youth employment, and expanding the existing food-stamp program.
Our SIRS ChallengeQuest asks: At the time of President Johnson's death in 1973, what was the U.S. poverty rate?
Top 3 Websites @ ProQuestK12.com
Each month, our SIRS team scours the Internet for top-quality websites for classrooms and libraries. Dive into the new month's selections: Ben Franklin's Words, Congress, Astronomy.
2010 Feedback: Students & Staff
"I wish I knew about the online resources like ProQuest, SIRS, and eLibrary where you can search a topic and get an enormous amount of articles on whatever you are researching. I just found out that [Joel] Barlow had these on their website last week!"—M. Brennan, Student @ Redding, CT
"We Love eLibrary: ... Used for general research and our annual spring survey always shows it is #1 favorite by faculty and students for general research. Can't say enough about SIRS: Love the Top 10 Box, A-Z list and Yes-No Topic Information boxes, they are awesome! Thank you for sharing why CultureGrams is so special! My student library worker just walked in and said "Hey, we used CultureGrams last hour..." Thanks for caring about our school kids and making your products so teen-user friendly!"
—S. Hacker, LMS @ Bolivar, MO
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