BY SUE KIESEWETTER
Enquirer Contributor
MASON -- Research in Mason City Schools is going high-tech.
An online database the district will subscribe to this school year will allow Mason students and families access to 600 magazines and 100 national and international newspapers.
The service, ProQuest Direct, divides Internet searches into high school, middle school and elementary school levels.
"The reason to go to online research is as soon as you buy an encyclopedia, it's outdated," said Virginia Smith, Mason High School's media specialist. "It's important for the research tools to be electronic because (information) changes."
The cost to the district is about $9,000. Access will be possible from all school buildings or from a home computer with a modem and an Internet account, said Dan Mason, the district's technology director.
The database service will begin next month, the same time high-speed Internet access will be available in every classroom in the district, Mr. Mason said. Families with Internet accounts will be able to use the database from their home computers by entering an account ID and password.
Different ways of searching will be provided according to the student's level, Ms. Smith said. All will be able to search by topic and publication. Articles and information will be age-appropriate. "They can research at the lowest level or the highest level," Ms. Smith said.
That's not to say students won't be using encyclopedias. Besides the bound volumes, the district is also subscribing to Internet versions of both the Grolier's Multimedia Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Americana. Those, too, are accessible from a student's home computer.
High school students also will be able to use Gale Net, a language arts database; Facts on File World News Digest; and SIRS Researcher, which includes articles from 1,200 publications on social, scientific, health, historic, economic, business, political and global issues.
