How To Survive High School, Pt. 3

TECHNOLOGY IS OUR FRIEND (continued)

http://www.encarta.com – This homepage is crawling with all sorts of educational links. There are three specific reference tools that you’ll probably want to try – the encyclopedia, the atlas, and the dictionary. The encyclopedia and the atlas are pretty straightforward. The dictionary, in addition to giving you a word’s definition, also offers sound clips to let you hear a word’s proper pronunciation. It also shows you a few tenses of the word you searched for.

http://www.skymaps.com – Do you love science? Do you love stars and planets and stuff? Are you pretending to like science because you’re anxious about a science project? If so, you can subscribe to the site and get free monthly sky charts. Or you can just download the one that they are offering on the site at the time of your visit.

http://www.researchpaper.com – This site can help you come up with topics for your research papers. The topics are sorted according to subject. No, you cannot buy a research paper at this site.

http://www.libraryspot.com – This site has tons of reference resources. You can even follow links to a library’s website.

http://www.bedfordbooks.com/rd – This is a great site for anyone who has never heard of The Bedford Handbook or anyone who has lost their copy of the book. This site will help you write research papers in accordance with certain styles, like the MLA style or the APA style. (You can find out what those styles are by visiting the site.)

http://www.barrysclipart.com – I don’t know who Barry is, but he has a lot of images on this site. You may want to add clipart images to projects.

http://www.yahoo.com – Yahoo is a popular site. In addition to its search engine, news can be found on the homepage. (High school student, have you met Mr. Current Events?) If you register for an e-mail address on yahoo.com, you get…an e-mail address! Ta-da! What were you expecting? An online calendar that you can use to remind yourself via e-mail of an important date? Please! Maybe in a perfect world, but not…. This diatribe has been interrupted to bring you this message: yahoo.com does have such a calendar. This message has been interrupted to bring you this apology: sorry. Let me make it up to you by suggesting more search engines: http://www.lycos.com, http://www.hotbot.com, http://www.askjeeves.com, http://www.dogpile.com, and http://www.google.com. Do you forgive me?

I’m suggesting the following online sources because they were precisely what I needed for a few school projects, but they were initially difficult to find.

http://www.students.gov – This site has links to information related to education, career development, community service, and other topics. The links to the site about our government’s branches may be especially useful to you.

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/cases/name.htm#Case_Name – This site, which is connected to the site for Cornell University’s law school, has a long list of Supreme Court cases. Oh, but it’s much more than a list. Each case’s name is a link to information about that case. WARNING! If you intend to use the site for a court-related project and you want the project to have a lot of depth, access the site as early as you can. Doing this will give you time to read a case’s writ of certiorari as well as a case’s syllabus. (If you can’t say “writ of certiorari” or you don’t know what one is, you probably don’t need to read one for your project. Be happy.) Note: There is a line of underscoring (“_”) between the words “Case” and “Name.”

http://www.law.cornell.edu – This is the site for Cornell University’s law school. If you click “Court Opinions”, you’ll be given a list of four links: U.S. Supreme Court, Federal Courts, New York Court of Appeals, and State Courts. If you want to reach this site FROM the previous site, click the “collection home” button on the previous site. Then, click the “to LII home” link on the new page. I haven’t figured out how to get TO the previous site from this site in an easy way. Well, at least I gave you both addresses.

http://www.bluefield.wvnet.edu/library/afamlinks.htm – This site has links to pages about African American literature. The links are organized by topics, like literary movements and periodicals. There's even a group of links about African American quilts.

IF YOU'RE NOT BORED TO TEARS, GO ON TO PART 4!

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