GALILEO: Georgia’s “Pot of Gold”  Marsha Murray Media Specialist Oglethorpe County Elementary School Lexington, Georgia

GALILEO, Georgia’s Statewide Virtual Library, provides a wealth of information for educators and students.  GALILEO stands for GeorgiA LIbrary LEarning Online and is a World Wide Web-based virtual library accessing multiple information resources. Its licensed content as well as unique Georgia content is a valuable tool for addressing the Georgia Performance Standards. 

            Often overlooked by educators, the GPS resources of GALILEO http://www.galileo.usg.edu are easy to access and user friendly.  Encyclopedia Britannica, SIRS, and EBSCO are examples of licensed content available.  The New Georgia Encyclopedia and the Digital Library of Georgia provided curriculum content for Georgia studies. GALILEO works with the Georgia Department of Education to increase the integration of content into the GPS portal, MyGaDOE.

            During her GaETC conference presentation, Lauren Fancher illustrated several of the resources available in Galileo and how they support the K-12 social studies GPS.  Encyclopedia Britannica Online School Edition has age group editions.  It also provides performance standards for all subjects related to your topic.  SIRS Discoverer provides various searches based on lexile levels and contains articles, biographies, country facts, maps, and pictures.  Searchasaurus can also be limited by lexile levels with guided searches for inexperienced children.  Kids Search is more mature than Searchasaurus in content and is more suited for middle school and advanced elementary students. Novelist K-8 provides teacher resources for reading across the curriculum with book lists by grades, age appropriateness, and lexile levels.

            GALILEO resources for Georgia studies can be matched to GPS as well.  The Digital Library of Georgia includes the New Georgia Encyclopedia.  Here you can find historical stories and actual artifacts related to Georgia’s history to enhance your curriculum.

            As an elementary school media specialist, I am always trying to provide beneficial and accurate information.  When developing collaborative lesson plans with teachers, I use GALILEO not just for standards but also as a teaching tool.  I demonstrate how to use GALILEO www.kids.galileo.usg.edu to students as part of my research lessons.  This session at GaETC gave me more insight into the many components of GALILEO enabling me to continually improve the quality of instruction at my school.

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