Are you smarter than a 5th grader? You will be, if you avail yourself of the wealth of information available on online encyclopedias. Maybe you grew up with those expensive multi-volume sets of encyclopedias sold by door-to-door salesman, where much of the information was obsolete before the ink dried. It’s time to become familiar with the Age of Information, best exemplified by online encyclopedias with their up-to-the-minute accuracy. They contain all the information in the world on millions of topics, easily searchable by keyword or category. Many entries provide color photographs, helpful for visual learners. On your way to search a specific topic, it’s easy to learn all kinds of facts just by viewing the home pages on these sites. They provide links to current events, interesting “facts of the day”, insightful quotations, and may even lure you to exciting discussion forums on hundreds of topics. If you have school-age children, introduce them early to the storehouse of knowledge available on these sites. You’ll be making them smarter than a 5th grader ought to be.
Top Encyclopedia Searches
- Encyclopedia.com (http://www.encyclopedia.com)
- Britannica.com (http://www.britannica.com/)
- Encarta.msn.com (http://www.encarta.msn.com/)
- Wikimedia.org (http://www.wikimedia.org)
Tips
- For well-rounded information, research your topic on more than one encyclopedia site.
- When allowing children to use the Internet, activate parental controls to control where they surf.