FAQs: What Information do the Abstracts Provide?
The computer responds to
your menu choices by giving you a list of all the resource titles
that fit your selection criteria. When you select the title of a
resource that you want to know more about, you first will see an
abstract for that resource. The abstract gives a brief description,
highlighting information before you decide to look at the resource
itself.
A team of natural science educators and teachers categorized resources and wrote the abstracts on Enhanced Science Helper. The team members classified resources for their grade-range applicability. They identified as many descriptors for each resource as possible to help users make connections between their purposes and the resource content.
Abstracts contain two parts: categorical descriptions of the resource, such as grade range, subject, and title, that the retrieval software uses when searching and a synopsis of the resource. The synopsis provides two kinds of information: the content of the resource and highlights of activities that students experience.
Not only do abstracts provide resource summaries, they also help you examine resources from several points of view. Although a resource will be called up in response to the specific criteria you enter, you may wish to examine the other information provided on the screen. For example, while a resource may have been called up because it incorporates the science process of "interpreting data," you may find that it also includes "predicting" and that it contributes to a major content theme, for example, "patterns in nature." In short, the abstracts contain useful information in addition to what you requested. If, for example, you are trying to bring planning in line with curricular frameworks or standards, the descriptors can be useful because they were developed with that possibility in mind.
The abstract tells you from what project and book the resource was taken. This information not only provides a reference but can help you find other resources in the same book. When looking over an activity in a book, a reader commonly flips through other parts of the book to see what is there. In Enhanced Science Helper, each resource stands alone. In other words, when you get to the end of a resource, you must enter additional commands to go to the next resource in the book. By using the Book contents button in the Abstract & Links Info window, you can access a table of contents for the original book in which this resource can be found.
If the resource you choose is one of a closely connected group, the synopsis of the resource will tell you that. For example, you might see: "This lesson is the third of five lessons." You can open any of those lessons from the window that comes up when you use the Book Contents button or the Current Book TOC command in the View menu.