Let’s stop by the Food Court and fill our plates with a few unusual snacks! Take the next 5 minutes to connect to Scholastic’s Make Your Own I SPY game and select a collection of items to put on your plate. Here’s what you do after linking to "Make Your Own I SPY:"
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Click on the START button.Select the background that looks like a table setting. (Ignore the riddle for today.)
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Look through the clip art and drag over a collection of items that you want on your plate or on the table.
Got it? Let's go!
Do you have a collection of things at home? Some fifth graders collect rocks. Others collect trading cards or Barbie dolls. They probably organize or sort their collections by size or color. Others get organized by making lists of things. Have you ever made a list of your friends and their phone numbers? If so, then you had the beginnings of a database. Surprise!A database is a computer tool that allows you to organize and store a "collection" of data, or facts. Remember how you collected items on the I SPY game and organized them on your plate or on the table? Database software uses files to organize your information or data. It helps you find information faster, reorganize it easier, and make changes.
Many, many people use databases in their jobs. A telephone operator looks up people’s names, phone numbers, and addresses at your request. Your school SIMS operator uses a database to look up student information and store your grades and attendance record. The school media professional uses a database to find out if your library book is overdue. Can you come up with any examples?
For the next 6 weeks, you will participate in some exciting activities to learn about databases. You’ll swim through a Shark Attack Statistics database and discover the number of deadly shark attacks that have occurred this year or in past years at the beach you visited on vacation. Ouch! Later, you might feel a little sick after using a database to investigate the sanitary grade of your favorite local restaurant.
Here’s a snapshot of a database about waterfalls. Grab a partner and use the Waterfalls database snapshot to quiz one another on the following four terms.
DatabaseFieldRecordEntry
Using the same Waterfalls database, think of two questions to ask your buddy. Need a few ideas?
Get ready to chuckle when you read about the unusual friends that Argentinolopus Galapodus put in a database for his address book. Understand the parts of A.G.’s database. Then read a few of his unbelievable entries.
Are you ready to test your understanding of the terms database, field, record and entry? Let’s look at the ISAF (International Shark Attack File) database on unprovoked shark attacks in North Carolina to identify examples of each of the four terms. You will notice there are 20 records with 7 fields in each record (Date, Victim’s Sex, Age, Location of Attack, Victim’s Activity, Result (Lived or Died?), Attacking Species). The entry for "Attacking Species" on the 57-year old Male at Salter Path was Great White. Find out if he survived. (Don’t worry about going in the water this summer! You will see how few shark attacks we have off the coast of North Carolina. Use the other databases to compare the number of N.C. shark attacks to the number of attacks off the coast of Florida.)
Coming
attractions for Weeks 19-24.
For weeks now, you’ve been researching a topic of your own choosing and collecting lots of interesting information. Print and use this page to jot down ideas for a possible database you can maintain at home and at school containing information on your most favorite research topic!
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