Best Web Reference Sites for Students and Google Reference Tips

Mastering effective web research skills certainly takes time and practice.  Learning to "think" like a search engine or playing the keyword game is similar to learning a foreign language, which can leave a teacher or student overwhelmed.  We have all been there more than once.  Luckily there are some wonderful tools to help.

Below are a list of reference links categorized by resource and grade levels making it easy for everyone.  Do you have elementary students researching rainforest animals?  Scroll down to National Geographic's Creature Feature.  How about high school students gathering current event stories?  Look for the links from the daily political cartoons or CNN Student News.  Also in the list are bibliography generators, conversion tools, biography databases, encyclopedias, weather data links, and more.  

You will also see Google tips in purple explaining how many of these reference tools can be used in a simple Google search.  They are easy to implement and only require one stop to Google.

I would highly recommend teachers to pull some of these links and place them on their classroom webpages.  As students conduct research, providing them with direct links will give them the scaffold they need to research effectively and efficiently.

Almanac

• The Original Farmer’s Almanac for Kids - (Grades 2-6) provides great information without the distraction of ads.  The text is short, which is excellent for beginning researchers.
• The World Almanac for Kids – (Grades 3-6) is not a complete resource but does offer good information on animals, geography, holidays, and more.
• This Day in History – (Grades 6-12) is multimedia driven and provides a daily video clip.

Atlas

• Gapminder (Grades 9-12) is a remarkable interactive tool.  Not specifically a physical atlas, but one that allows students to see data over time.  Be sure to watch the two minute tutorial.
• Geology World (Grades 7-12) offers excellent physical and political maps
• National Atlas of the United States – (Grades 3-12) is not the easiest to navigate, but it does provide excellent layers to data such as climate, population, transportation, and more.  You will need to redraw the map for each layer you add.
• National Geographic World Atlas – (Grades 3-12) is a basic atlas that provides images for copying into presentations or printing. 
• Worldmapper - (Grades 7-12) is an interesting atlas that resizes the countries based on the subject.  For example, the population map enlarges the countries of China and India.

 Google Tip – (Grades 4-12) Type in the name of a major city, state, and/or country into Google. Many of the cities now feature images of major attractions along with the street views.  You might even find user created maps of bicycle routes, recommended attractions, and more.

Animal Information

• BBC Nature – (Grades 7-12) offers basic animal facts along with photos
• Enchanted Learning Animal Fact Sheets and Printouts – (Grades K-3) is a rather extensive collection of animal data text readability for beginning researchers.
• National Geographic Animals – (Grades 6-12) provides detailed information and many with multimedia support.
• National Geographic Creature Feature – (Grades 2-5) is one of the best sites on the web.  The animals are categorized by classification and habitat making it easy to navigate.  Each animal profile does feature multimedia resources.
• San Diego Zoo Animal Bytes – (Grades 4-8) is an excellent resource for multimedia and easy to read text.  You will not find every animal, but what you do find is worth it.  Look for animal sound bytes on the left of your search results.

Bibliography & Citation Generators

• Citation Center – (Grades 7-12) is an easy tool for generating a citation for a variety of resources including 8 track tapes.  As you add new citations, a bibliography will be created.
• EasyBib (MLA format only) – (Grades 7-12) does provide citation generators for blogs, podcasts, federal papers, and more
• Knight Cite (Grades 7-12) is one of the most extensive generators on the web.  Using the resource types on the left, students can easily choose the correct field form for nearly every resource.

Biography Sources

• Black History Month Biographies from Gale Group – (Grades 6-12) is an excellent resource for extensive biographical information.
• Biography.com (Grades 7-12) is an extensive collection of biographies, but the amount of content is varied from person to person. 

 Google Tip – (Grades 6-12) Type “biography:” with the colon and the person you are researching to find results quickly.  Example “biography: Amelia Earhart”.  This trick also works for inventors.  Type in “inventor: Eli Whitney”.

Conversion Tools

• eCalc – (Grades 4-12) is a little tricky to figure out at first, but truly remarkable.  Using the right side of the screen, select the unit of conversion you need.  Type in a number and everything on the list provides the conversion.
• Online Conversion  - (Grades 4-12) converts virtually anything.  Excellent resource.

 Google Tip: - (Grades 3-12) Google has a free internal conversion tool.  Simply type your desired conversion in the search engine and press search.  For example 55 km in miles or 123 cm in inches.  Google will do the rest.  It recognizes common standard and metric measurements for cooking, mass, distance, energy, temperature, time, and currency.  For currency conversions, you will not type the $ sign.  Instead type 1 USD in Canadian dollars or 1 pound in Australian dollars.

Current Events

• CNN Student News – (Grades 7-12) updates daily along with multimedia and news quizzes.
• Daryl Cagle’s Daily Political Cartoon Index – (Grades 9-12) offers the best of political cartoons daily.  This is an excellent Social Studies resource.
• History in the News from ClassPress.net – (Grades 6-12) links current events with historical references going as far back as the year 1500. 
• New York Times Student News Summaries – (Grades 6-12) provides daily US, international, and educational stories.  The sidebar also provides links to a daily news quiz test preparation question of the day.
• Science in the News from ClassPress.net – (Grades 9-12) now high school science classrooms can discuss current events relating to physics, chemistry, and biology.
• The Week in Rap – (Grades 5-12) covers the top US headlines with video and music.  A new video is uploaded every Friday.
• Time for Kids – (Grades K-6) is an excellent elementary current events resource.  Many of the articles that are featured in the weekly magazine are provided on the site along with graphic organizers and quizzes.

 Google Tip – (Grades 9-12) Google News links all the major news outlets in one location including your local newspapers.  It updates hourly so your class always up to speed.

Dictionary-Thesaurus

• Visual Dictionary from Merriam Webster – (Grades 4-12) is truly a remarkable resource and the perfect companion for ELL students.  I also recommend this for music teachers.
• Wordsmyth  - (Grades 3-12) is by far my favorite educational dictionary-thesaurus tool on the web.  The site hosts a wonderful children’s dictionary that provides sentences for each word, which is valuable for primary students.  If you register advanced multimedia features are available.  Using the older student dictionary is an excellent option, as well.
• Word Central - (Grades 5-12) is another excellent resource, but my favorite feature is the rhyming dictionary.

 Google Tip (Grades 7-12) Type “define:” with the colon and your search term.  For example define: innovation.  The results will be listed with green links.

Encyclopedia

• Encarta – (Grades 4-12) does have a rather extensive encyclopedia available for free.  The articles are brief, but for a quick reference it is very good.  Included in this basic encyclopedia are images, physical maps, and country national anthems.  The premium version offers more multimedia, but I do recommend the free version
• Encyclopedia Smithsonian – (Grades 7-12) offers the portal to everything Smithsonian.  It does take some patience to navigate, but true gems of information can be found including some with multimedia.
• World Book Encyclopedia – (Grades K-12) has had a major facelift this past fall.  Now divided into four products of elementary, middle grades, high school, and a Spanish encyclopedia World Book has something for everyone.  As an added bonus, this resource is free to all Kansas students.

 Google Tip – (Grades 6-12) Google does have a wildcard option by using the asterisk key (*).  The way it works is to not type in questions, but rather answers.  For example: “* was the 18^th president of the United States” or “the major causes of

the civil war were *”.  The Google results will feature bolded words with your answer. 

Time and Date

• Time and Date – (Grades 3-12) has yearly calendars and a few bonus items including a countdown clock, a timezone conversion tool, and the current time anywhere on earth.

 Google Tip – (Grades K-12) can give you the current time anywhere.  Type the word “time” and the city, state/country for a quick result. 

Weather Data

• NASA Satellite Weather Images – (Grades 3-12) updates regularly with information all around the globe
• National Weather Service – (Grades 3-12) offers animated maps on all current weather conditions including severe weather and fire hazards.
• Weather Underground – (Grades 5-12) provides extensive weather data with maps, almanacs reference, and hourly weather forecasting.

 Google Tip – (Grades K-12) simply type in the word “weather” and a zip code or a city and state/country to see the current weather and the 3 day forecast.