I searched armadillos on SIRS Discoverer.  I clicked on graphics and got 10 different pictures, one being a chart of different animal defenses.  When I clicked on Lexile it arranged the articles from lowest to highest.  It also categorizes articles into reading levels that are general, easy, moderate, and challenging which would be beneficial to most classrooms I would think.  I know my classes have a broad range of student ability and this makes picking reading material fairly easy.

The country I chose was Pakistan.  It listed basic facts such as the capital, climate, population, etc.  When I clicked on the maps section I did notice that almost all of them were political in nature with counties, provinces, highways, etc listed.  It would have been nice to see more physical and thematic maps in this section.  One feature that I did find valuable was the "All Articles" tab to get some information on the country/region.  We do current events from time to time and this would be a valuable tool to use for that.

The activities page included an immigration map as well as a tutorial on how to create a timeline which is something we use often in geography. There were also various activities for all the different content areas.

On the SIRS Issues Researcher I chose the topic of smoking bans.  The Topic Overview gives a brief history of smoking in the U.S. including when the Surgeon General's first warning came out.  Lists the pros/cons and essential questions.  It provides a list of key terms to know and the definitions.  It also includes additional resources and events related to smoking bans.

The Research Tools section gives various studies and research done, magazines and newspaper articles, charts, graphs, and maps.  Also, under "My Analysis", it gives you a list of questions to consider when choosing a topic as well as a Debate Guide and writing help.

The Articles section was, as one would suppose, full of various articles from newspapers and magazines.

Under Curriculum Pathfinders I searched under social studies and it showed different courses, timelines, maps, and primary sources to use along with research ideas.  A click on "research ideas" gives a list of different sites one can choose from.  Under the graphics and multimedia tab there are excellent pieces of information that would come in handy when researching for a paper, speech, or debate.