A Selected List: Websites for Students
All links and most of the descriptions
below are selected from: Colker, David: "A Student's Guide to Research Online."
Los Angeles Times. 26 Aug. 2007 : C2.
What did students ever do without the Web? Maybe learn less about topics their parents would prefer remain under wraps.
But undeniably, the Internet is a tremendous research and study tool.
In that spirit, here's our annual guide to free sites in a variety of topics that crop up from grade school through college.
ACADEMIC ALL-STARS
www.crf-usa.org/links/research1.html: The Los Angeles-based,
nonprofit Constitutional Rights Foundation, which sponsors youth programs to promote civic responsibility, also offers
on its site hundreds of links to a variety of school subjects.
www.ipl.org: Started as a class project
at the University of Michigan, the Internet Public Library provides
a clickable index of research sites in numerous fields. It's now
maintained by a consortium of colleges and universities.
vos.ucsb.edu: The Voice of the Shuttle
(the name refers to weaving on a loom) from UC Santa Barbara has
been compiling links to academic topics for more than a decade.
www.doaj.org: More than 800
professional journals concerning science, education, the arts and
other topics can be searched on this Directory of Open Access
Journals site.
ANATOMY
www.bartleby.com/107: The 1918
version of Henry Gray's "Anatomy of the Human Body" provides descriptions
and vibrant illustrations.
www.innerbody.com: An interactive
guide to not only the skeletal but also the digestive, muscular,
cardiovascular and other systems.
ARCHAEOLOGY
archnet.asu.edu: Links to museums,
digs and academic papers, maintained by Arizona State University.
It's organized by topic and geography.
www.cyberpursuits.com/archeo: In
addition to links, this site provides a guide to recent magazines and journal articles.
ART HISTORY
witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks.html:
Comprehensive set of links to sites dealing with art periods, artists and museums.
www.metmuseum.org/toah: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art's timeline of art history, from cave drawings to the present.
BIOLOGY
www.biology-online.org: This
site, maintained by current and former students worldwide, contains
not only links but also tutorials and a forum where questions can be posted.
www.biology.arizona.edu:
This University of Arizona site features links organized by topic.
CHEMISTRY
www.chemicalelements.com:
There are lots of websites dealing with the periodic table of
elements, but this one is particularly well designed and easy to
use. It was created in 1996 as an eighth-grader's science fair project.
www.chemdex.org: The University of
Sheffield in England maintains this site, which has more than 7,000 links.
antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/index.shtml:
Need practice? This Frostburg State University site features
quizzes, tutorials and animated demonstrations.
CONVERSION TOOLS
www.sciencemadesimple.com/conversions.html:
Online metric conversions, and vice versa, of distance, area,
weight, speed, temperature and other measurements.
www.minneapolisfed.org/research/data/us/calc:
Inflation calculator from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
shows average changes in prices between any two years, from 1913 to the present.
DEMOGRAPHICS
factfinder.census.gov: This
site was put together by officials at the Census Bureau, so it's
not exactly user-friendly. But with a bit of patience, you can
unearth detailed U.S. population information.
LANGUAGES
babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt:
Translates words and whole sites from English into 12 languages and
vice versa. But often inexactly.
www.verbix.com/languages:
Conjugates verbs in 81 languages.
www.ethnologue.com: Information
on the world's 6,912 known living languages.
LITERATURE
www.gutenberg.org: Even before
the Web as we know it was born, this wonderful literary service
began digitizing public-domain works. There are now more than
20,000 downloadable books on the site.
www.cliffsnotes.com: The famed
Cliffs Notes study guides to literary classics can be read on the website for free.
www.sparknotes.com: Similar
to Cliffs Notes, but in some cases more comprehensive. There are
also message forums here, so you can discuss the books with others online.
MATH
www.algebrahelp.com: Algebra
practice problems and other helpers, such as lists of prime numbers.
www.mathplayground.com/flashcards.html:
Here's an online version of flashcards plus other
math games, mostly on the grammar-school level.
www.webmath.com: A review of
problems and formulas, from grade-school arithmetic level to high-school calculus.
MUSIC
www.music.indiana.edu/music_resources:
From Indiana University comes this list of classical and popular music links, organized
by genre, composer and performer.
www.essentialsofmusic.com: Brief
biographies of composers and descriptions of eras.
PHILOSOPHY
plato.stanford.edu/contents.html:
The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, founded in 1995, is
a work in progress that currently provides 1,000 essays by professionals in the field.
www.utm.edu/research/iep:
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is aimed at a more general
readership than the Stanford site.
www.epistemelinks.com/index.aspx:
This site offers thousands of links to information on more than 450
philosophers.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
thomas.loc.gov: The Library of
Congress site includes the daily Congressional Record and updates
on pending legislation.
www.psr.keele.ac.uk/official.htm:
Links to the websites of governments worldwide, including some governments in exile.
PSYCHOLOGY
allpsych.com: A hodgepodge of links
and information, including a glossary of basic terms, self-evaluation tests and career guides.
www.psychology.org: Nearly 2,000
links to publications and resources.
WORLD FACTS
www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook:
Not everything the CIA does is secret. Its handy World Factbook
provides data on numerous countries. A listing includes a nation's
population, geography, government type, industries, agriculture,
languages and broadcast stations. The site is updated about every two weeks.
Source: Colker, David. "A Student's Guide to Research Online." Los
Angeles Times. 26 Aug. 2007 : C2.
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