Final Week

So we've come to the end of the discovery. I think when I went into this I thought I knew quite a bit about Marvel because I use it with students fairly regularly. What surprised me the most was how much I didn't really know about Marvel after all. The Hobby and Crafts Reference center really surprised me. I had never bothered to look at it so I was really amazed by the scope of the resources. The fact that people can get actual patterns and instructions was great. I shared that resource specifically with two teachers, one of whom teaches a fiber and fabrics class at my school and the other who teaches a lot of hands-on classes. Another area I had never spent much time looking at was the health resources. It was a surprise to see how user friendly so much of that is, since I'd shied away from anything but the Health Source Consumer Edition because in the past I'd felt like it was just too technical to be useful to non-health care providers. I like Medline plus. 

One search feature I'd never used before is the visual search. I'm not really a visual person so I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. I decided after some trial and error that it has potential and works well to organize results that can seem overwhelming. I think I will use the visual search when working with students who seem to need better organization.

The business resources were another area I don't use regularly. It was a great surprise to have a need for  that right after the lesson on it. I had a teacher having her class start a project where they have to create and market a product. She wanted some articles on starting a business and marketing ideas. I was able to find some resources for her.

I think one of my struggles in my current job is getting people at school to use Marvel. I have talked at staff meetings about it and demonstrated some things, mostly the Student Research Center. I have now shared some of the new resources I learned about with specific teachers in hopes that they will begin to use it. I teach research lessons to students and demonstrate certain things, but until teachers expect students to use articles from Marvel databases in their research I will continue to struggle. One of my goals is to push that expectation and keep showing teachers as well as students how easy it is to use Marvel and what great articles and information they can find.