Online Encyclopedia and Other References
- Electric Library Presents Encyclopedia.com
This site enables students to find information in 17,000 short articles from
The Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. It told me more about
Gallitzin than I wanted to know!
- Information Please Almanac
A site related to the Electric Library's Encyclopedia is Infoplease.com,
an online almanac with a variety of sections, notably the
Infoplease.com Kids Almanac. This site contains a word of the day, a
featured person who was born on the current date, and "today in history."
In addition to such areas as people, sports, the world, and so
forth, there is a homework center designed to help K-12 students
with homework problems.
- The Knowledge Adventure Encyclopedia
This site is another that can help students with homework or in-class
assignments. Some of the subjects covered are bugs, reptiles, and
dinosaurs. The "Browse All" section contains hundreds of topics to learn
about. The "Cool Sites" area allows students to play a Concentration-type
game in the "Dr. Brain" area.
- Encyberpedia
This online encyclopedia lets people search for just about anything. A click
on the Atlas section enables one to find maps of countries
from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe. The Biography section leads to indices of inventors
and many others. A student might be shocked to learn about inventor William
Stanley, Jr. . . . In the English section are found "Books On-line," including a beautifully
illustrated version of Henry James' Daisy Miller. When a student gets to
"Shakespeare's Bookshelf," be certain she or he clicks on one of the books to
access it. The tragedies are on the bottom shelf. The "Glossaries" section
includes the American Sign Language Dictionary (be certain to decode the
message after learning sign language) and The Dictionary of the
Mushroom, with an excellent recipe for Deznik grilled with cheese.
Other parts of the Encyberpedia site present information about health,
history, math, money, news, politics, religion, science, space exploration,
sports, street maps, and weather. The "Windows 2000" area shows livecam
shots of various places around the world. People in many cities can see what
the weather or traffic is like without looking out the window. The Search
Engines section introduces readers to more search engines than most people
realize have been created.
- Searchopolis
Branch off this site to its "reference" subpage, go through
the "Reference Desk," and you can find dictionaries, encyclopedias,
government and statistics, maps, atlases, flags, and information about
museums and galleries. If you love to play with acronyms, you will find
plenty of things to do if you click on "Abbreviations and Acronyms."
- RefDesk
The categories included on this site are "News" (e.g., Associated Press,
Reuters), "Radio News" (with the appropriate plug-ins, one can hear news from U.S. networks such as ABC, Britain's BBC, etc. ), "Newspapers" (such as the New York Times and USA
Today), TV news (e.g., CNN), "Magazines" (e.g., Newsweek),
"International News" (e.g., the London Times, Russia Today), "Columns"
(e.g., popular American columnists Dave Barry and Ellen Goodman), and miscellaneous other sources of
information.
- Ready Reference
This site leads to other reference sites that are helpful to students
who need information for writing projects. Sites include "Atlas of the United
States," "Encarta Encyclopedia Online," "Encyclopedia.com," "Geographic Name
Server," "Information Please Almanac," and the "Internet Public Library,"
where one can search another collection of references. The Knowledge Adventure
Encyclopedia, Old Farmer's Almanac, and the WWWebster Dictionary can also be
accessed from this site.
- The Old Farmer's Almanac
You don't have to be a farmer to enjoy this almanac. Click on "Red Letter
Days" on the current month's calendar to learn about an event associated with
the date, check historical events, and look at the weather history. Enjoy the
advice of the day and the question of the day, and see if you can solve the
puzzle of the day. In the gardening tips area, there are instructions
about watering gloxinias from the bottom. (Perhaps we should look up
gloxinia in one of the online dictionaries?)
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted July 1999
© 1999-2000 International Reading Association, Inc. ISSN 1096-1232