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Question: My daugter is going on a fieldtrip to United Nations building in New York City tomorrow, how can I find some good information tonight to help her learn more before the trip?

Answer: I used ZoomerOne for Grade 3 to 6 social studies and put in "United Nations" as keywords to start my search. First, I clicked on "Kidskonnect" in the ZoomerOne page,  this "Maps" was the first link, which contains a lot of knowledge about maps and "United Nations Cartographic Section." The second link on that page was "New York." It was a portal page for New York and a link lead me directly into United Nations official Web site. I chose "Welcome" (English version) to get in. Within seconds, I found "CyberSchoolBus," which is full of interesting information. 

I didn't stop there, since I know ZoomerOne can offer me more than that. I clicked on "Librarians' Internet Index"  and found a lot of links to important documents of UN. Although many of them are too much details for young kids, this "Infonation" gives kids an interactive way to identify and learn about nations in the world. 

Then I went to "Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators" on the ZoomerOne page, and found "Regions of the World & World Languages" which has more links to great Web resources.

I wanted to find out if "EduHound" can give me something new, there it is, on top of the list, "United Nations OnLine" which is designed to bring students around the world together to practice skills used in United Nations, this is totally new to me. 

It seems to me this is enough information to digest in a short time for a young kid, so I skip links such as Edselect, FirstGov for kids, and many others on the ZoomerOne page for now. The page is saved so that I can go back to it later. But the last link on the ZoomerOne page is worth a try, the "Wikipedia." It does give me a very good overview of United Nations. 

I wonder what most people will get by searching "United Nations" on Google, so I click on a ZoomerOne prepared link, which uses Google in safe mode and save me the trouble of typing in keywords again. Well, the list is not very useful to kids. However, while in safe mode, I can access some images for United Nations, the result is not bad. Before I leave this subject, I change keywords on Google to "United Nations New York Tour Guide," since I know tour guides are whom kids will interact with. "About the tour and the guides" was quite interesting to kids. On the same Google safe page, "United Nations (The UN) - Landmarks - Visitors Guide - New York," is also useful. 

It took me only five minutes and hardly any typing to get to this point. I believe it is more than enough for most kids to know before a field trip. ZoomerOne clearly helped me aggregate Web resources for specific needs beyond Google. 

                              

  

 

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