Korea Notes and Links

Mr. Sirois is at a conference, so I am teaching his classes about Korea. Here is a link to a map of the Korean peninsula. What does its shape look like? Korean children say that it resembles a rabbit!

You may wonder why I am so interested in Korea. If you take a look at my kids, Max and Megan, you'll figure it out!

An unusual map shows the comparison of North and South Korea at night. North Korea is almost completely dark. Here's another look at North Korea's amazing Mass Games.

Here is a short film of a traditional Korean folk dance.

Examples of Good and Bad Web Pages

East Grand Rapids Middle School students in the Multimedia Presentations class are going to be designing their own Web pages. Today, I am showing them examples of both good and bad sites. First, the bad sites:

World's Worst Website

Jim Jacobson
Dani's Pet Bird Care
Larvalbug's Home Page


Now, for the good sites:

Project JUICE (designed by a 16 year old in New Zealand)
Animals in Danger (designed by an 8 year old)
Tim Lahan (Commercial site, but good design)
Best Designs (gallery of pages that demonstrate well-designed pages)

Scholarly vs. Non-Scholarly Resources

Here is an excellent chart showing the difference between scholarly and non-scholarly research. Many thanks to the library staff at the Springfield Township High School Virtual Library for creating this!

Research Sources

MEL (Michigan Electronic Library) is an excellent research source. It has a variety of databases, which are collections of articles from journals, magazines, newspapers, books, and transcripts from all over the world! Some of the databases focus on a specific subject, like law or medicine, but most cover millions of topics. I recommend these:

Academic One File
Expanded Academic ASAP
General Reference Center Gold
Infotrac Custom Newspapers

You can log on to mel.org, click on "see databases from library" (in middle), and then choose from the many databases in the list.

You can use MEL from home, but have to enter a Michigan driver's license number or state identification number because Michigan tax dollars provide access to these resources. Your information will be encoded and not used in any way, so it's very safe.

Log on to MEL sometime and just look around; you'll be amazed at what you'll find!

Atlas of World History

Here is a great Web site Mr. Wojo found! It gives you an interactive map of the world which you can see at various times through history. There are also lots of links to brief information about various countries, people, civilizations, etc. You have to download it to run and, as of today (October 17, 2007), students cannot download due to district policy, but try it out at home! The tech department is working on making it accessible to students here at school.

Better Source for Searching Art

OK....I found a better site for searching art by subject. Artcyclopedia, while a decent site, only allows you to search by artist, title, or museum. Searching by title is fine, as long as the subject is in the title. But what if the subject isn't in the title, like the famous painting of the 2 grim farmers titled "American Gothic?" The title has nothing to do with farming! By the way, did you know that the two people in that painting are supposed to represent a father and daughter, not a married couple? The man was artist Grant Wood's dentist and the woman was Grant's sister!

A better site, I think, for searching by subject is called Artchive. Try it out and then let me know how you think it compares to Artcyclopedia.

Mrs. Miller's Myth Oscillum Project

Hi, EGRHS students! It's a beautiful autumn day and almost the weekend, but first you have a Latin project! Here are some sites that may help you. You can also click on them from the right side of the page. If these are helpful, post a comment. We also have many mythology books and borrowed some picture books from Wealthy Elementary. Thanks, Wealthy, for sharing your books!

You may not have thought of this, but the Artcyclopedia is an excellent resource for finding sculptures, paintings, and drawings. Try typing in a name, such as "Hercules" in the title bar and you'll (hopefully) find many works of art with Hercules as the subject.

Mythweb is a fun site to use because it looks like a comic strip. There is a lot of information here, too, though, so take a look!

Another great site recommended by Mrs. Miller is Encyclopedia Mythica.

The best site I've found for locating individual Gods and Goddesses is at Infoplease. Check it out!

This one is pretty simple to find: Greekmythology.com. I don't know much about it, but it seems to have a lot of solid information.

Finally, take a look at this very thorough, scholarly site - The Perseus Project. It was created and is maintained by Tufts University. Do you know where Tufts is located?