Y5 An Introduction to Britannica School Online (ebonline)

Y5s are in the middle of studying different body systems and each student has been assigned an organ as focus of study.  This was a good opportunity to introduce and review Britannica School (ebonline):
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1. It's an authoritative and filtered source compared to Google, Kiddle and Wikipedia
2. Students can toggle between reading levels within Elementary, Middle, and High School
3. Because of the varying reading levels, students at varying reading levels can find an article accessible specifically to them
4. Time is used more effectively. The results are more focused so there is less time searching, struggling with search terms, scrolling through irrelevant results.
5. For older primary students, there is a citation function. This can lead to a whole discussion on why it's important to cite sources, plagiarism and academic honesty
6. For this type of straightforward fact finding mission, ebonline is practical.  However because it lacks the comprehensiveness, breadth and currency of Google and Wikipedia, it can be less useful and more frustrating for students when investigating current events or very specific topics.

In the first Y5 class, I shared a Google doc where they could cut and paste their answers in a table, but I found students spent too much time fiddling with the document when inputting the answers.  So for the second Y5 class, I had them log into ebonline to read about their assigned organ.  After a few minutes to check their recall and understanding, I had them close their computer and tell me one fact they learned about it.  This worked much better, especially in the very limited time I had with them for library class (30 minutes maximum).  Students also had to learn to scan for new information within a short time, about 5 minutes.  Here are the results.