The Brown and the Gold - May 1996

When I finally got past the crowd and grabbed a computer, someone was glued to the JFK CD, so I decided to try out Microsoft Encarta '95.

As I opened the program, I could hear music and voices on the headphones. An introduction appeared. There was a choice of nine areas of interest, ranging from Physical Science and Technology to Sports, Hobbies and Pets. Performing Arts seemed like a good place to start.

From the category of Performing Arts, I chose Music. A box appeared with a whole list of kinds of music. I like rock. By clicking on it, the description and history of rock and a small screen appeared. A symbol for audio with singers' names was on the top. I was in the mood for some David Bowie, and there he was on the screen. I pressed "play" at the bottom of the screen and before I knew it, I was grooving to one of his old hits.

Life Science sounded pretty boring, but I decided to give it it a try as my next area of interest. I got into Anatomy and Physiology and found out some pretty interesting facts. Did you now that a human excretes 100 billion bacteria a day?

This program also has a timeline. Type in a year and find out all the historic events of that time. It also has a "place" box. Type in the name of a place and voila, all the facts about the place are in front of your face. There is a media section which shows you clippings if what you were looking up was ever in the news.

I walked out of the computer room feeling exhilarated. I didn't get to watch the JFK assassination, but I knew my way around on CD ROM program, and Microsoft Encarta '95 is sure going to be useful to me when I get new assignments on any subject.

Computer library expands again

In addition to a basic computer information retrieval system, our CD-Rom collection is growing, both in size and popularity.

A Woodstock high school student can now look up social issues in our SlRS-Social Issues Researcher.

There are several thousand current newspaper and magazine articles on CD-Rom, updated quarterly.

Our high school students can use the new Shakespeare Romeo & Gallate CD-Rom with multiple video clips from performances, along with lots of literary information. The Shakespeare class members already used it in their classroom by rolling in a computer on one our new moveable carts.

The Lcssen-German language CD Rom is being used by the German language students, and math students are learning fiom Geometric Sketchpad.

Expan Guidance package for colleges is a very popular package among students researching their college choice.