Mazapan’s EBSCOhost Resource

A presentation for all Mazapan School teachers

Claude Rochon

OBJECTIVESTo learn how to access and search for information in EBSCOhost databases

To learn how to use search limiters to bring down results to a workable amount

To integrate the usage of EBSCOhost databases in your lessons and assignments

To teach your students how to access and search for information and to limit search results in EBSCOhost databases

To log in to Mazapan´s EBSCOhost resource, first go to the Mazapan School website and click on the EBSCOhost link.

You will be taken here, to the EBSCOhost login page. In the User ID field, type “mazapan”, and in the password field, type “school”. Then click on “Login” or press the Enter key.

You will then see this: The list of available databases. Note that the databases are named according to the people who will use them. Students and teachers can access all the ddatabases. Let’s take a quick look at them...

Searches can be performed by topic (left column) or within specific categories such as biographies, books and encyclopedias, magazines and newspapers (center). This database works well to find background information for student projects and assignments.

In addition to topic searches and an area for primary and Middle School teacher resources, this database offers students a dictionary and an encyclopedia.

This database´s topic tabs lead to sub-topics. For example, the “Animals” tab leads to articles on Amphibians, Dinosaurs, Habitats, Mammals, Reptiles, Birds, Fish, Insects and Spiders, Pets and Wild Things.

This database is all about Literature. The Browse tab on the left features entries on authors and literary works. The Reference Shelf tab includes an encyclopedia of literature, a dictionary, help with citing papers, a research guide, and a literary glossary.

This database is similar to the Teacher Profile database, but the controls are in Spanish and searches lead to articles in Spanish.

Includes 14 databases with thousands of informational texts

Content is at the highest academic level

Ideal for searching for related articles to help you in your Middle School and High School lessons.

Articles can be cited, downloaded and printed.

ADVANTAGES

For teachers and High School students

MAIN DISADVANTAGE

Finding the exact information you are searching for on this database and all the others can sometimes be challenging. Look at what happens when you type “George Washington” in the search box and you don’t click on anything else…

Does anybody have the time to search more than 13,000 results? Of course not! That is why you must use search limiters to reduce the number of results to a workable number. Here’s how:

First, click on “Full Text”. You should do this with every search to make sure to have access to the full text and not have to look for it elsewhere.

Second, click on “Peer Reviewed”, to ensure that the information you retrieve has been reviewed for accuracy.

Clicking on “Full Text” and “Peer Reviewed” has brought our result list down to 472. Much lower than 13,000, but still high. To further decrease the results list, use more search limiters at the left of the page.

Limiting the search for articles published between 2000 and 2014 by using the date limiter sliding cursor has decreased the amount of results even more, but not enough. This is when you should use the “Subject” limiter which is below the date limiter.

You can select one of the subject choices the site provides or click on “See More” to get a pop-up box that lists all of the subject terms. This will finally allow you to bring your results down to a workable number.

When you click on “Show More” in the Subject tab, a pop up box appears, allowing you to limit your results according to specific subject terms. Clicking on “Washington George – 1732-1799” brings the amount of results down to 8, a workable number.

WHY USE EBSCOhost?Mazapan´s Ebscohost databases contain hundreds of thousands of articles of all educational levels

EBSCOhost articles are related to every subject taught in school.

Many EBSCOhost articles are peer reviewed, which ensures that the information is accurate.

All of the EBSCOhost databases are regularly updated and new articles are added every day.

EBSCOhost databases have a feature that helps students correctly cite their papers.

EBSCOhost databases can help you incorporate Blended Learning techniques in your classroom.

Please keep the following in mind…

We strongly encourage you to use Mazapan´s EBSCOHost databases to help prepare your classes and to incorporate EBSCOHost searching in your class assignments and projects.

Students should practice using databases because they will probably do so in college as well.

Thank you very much for your attention

Do you have any questions?