Besides these official online encyclopedia websites
there are other online encyclopedia like resources
that should be mentioned as being useful online
resources:
Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia
If you ask a room full of educators about Wikipedia
you'll get a variety of responses from curiosity to
outright rage. Wikipedia is the brainchild of
Jimmy Wales who created a web based free
encyclopedia that
anyone could edit. The power of it is that
anyone can edit it, the flaw of it is that anyone
can edit it anonymously (there are lots of
Criticisms of Wikipedia). However, please
be aware that Wikipedia does provide two things
pretty consistently: 1) the most up to
date information on the newest technologies 2)
a good starting point to find other, more reputable
online resources on a given topic. You can always
check out the "External Links" list at the bottom of
any Wikipedia entry to find more "Citable"
resources. Here's an interesting website that
shows you where updates to Wikipedia are coming
from:
http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/
2008/9
Wikipedia Selection for Schools
SOS Children's Villages is a nonprofit
organization based in the United Kingdom that
provides charity services to orphans in 124
countries. Among their many projects they
recruited volunteers to edit a version of Wikipedia
so it could be used as part of the
UK National
Curriculum. This pared down and static
version of Wikipedia is small enough to fit on a
single DVD and is intended to be accurate enough to
be used in English speaking schools all around the
world.
How
Stuff Works
Here's an online resource that actually does what it
claims to do, it really does explain how stuff
works. It was started in 1999 as a hobby by
Marshall Brian, a former North Carolina
University Professor. Though it initially
focused on science and technology the content has
expanded to just about anything you might be curious
about. Currently the website is owned by
Discovery
Communications and it's integrating lots of
video content from the
Discovery
Channel. Here's a
3 minute video about how laser printers work.
Additional
Encyclopedias from our Network Resources
This is a list of hyperlinks from our own district
network and it includes such websites as:
eLibrary,
Grolier
Online,
Merriam-Webster Online,
World Book Online,
Historical Newspapers,
InfoTrac (from Thomas Gale),
ProQuest and
POWER Library from the State of Pennsylvania.
