In the 21st century, students no longer depend on the libraries to gather information. They use the internet. It helps them complete their home works, gather information, help them write their essays etc. Here are some really nice websites that will help you use the Internet for schoolwork more efficiently. These sites are recommended to middle school students that are preparing to go to high school and to those that are taking Mr. P’s class next year ;)
SparkNotes
Have you ever suffered from reading Shakespeare? This site will get rid of your pain. It has videos, guidelines, brief summaries that will help you understand those hard and complicated literature. Most kids in high school know this site and are using it to understand those books that they learn in class. This site provides character analysis, explanations of most metaphors, symbolism in the book, summaries and other important things that are needed for you to understand the book. Most importantly, it has a life section where you can take a break from studying and relax and read fun articles. And if you want to write articles yourself, you can try posting them on SparkLife (the relax section*they have fun quizzes too)
Wikipedia
Yes, everyone knows this site and is probably using it. Your teachers have also probably told you that this site is very unreliable because everyone who has an account gets to add or delete information on this site. That’s true that Wikipedia is not that reliable but one thing most people forget is that the links cited on the bottom of the page are different. They in most cases refer to authentic sources. Read some of the sites that are provided and they may be very helpful for your essays and term papers. As you all know, Wikipedia provides an easy and understandable description about various topics and is written in a language that everyone understands. It is especially useful for second language learners.
Qiss – Ebsco Host
Never thought that one of the most useful sites is given on our school website did you? Ebsco Host contains articles, and pdf files about a lot of information that is taught in school. The other good thing about this site is that the information required to do a proper citation are also listed so it’s easy for students to do their citation. Students also don't necessarily have to worry about the reliability of the information found. If you need the username and password, please contact with one of our teachers.
Wikimedia Commons and Flickr
Unlike the pictures found on the other sites, the images found on these two sites do not have to be cited in the usual way. Some photos don’t even need to be cited at all. Citation are repeatedly mentioned in this article because as soon as you get into high school, there is an high possibility that your teachers will ask you to correctly cite all the websites you get your pictures and information from. You cannot just add a photo from a website to your presentation just because it’s awesome anymore. Ask those in grade 11 this year who has had to do citations for their websites and term paper and they will tell you how much trouble they have had and how much work and time it took. When its your turn in the future, you will feel glad about not having to cite a few of the sites that you took the picture from. Be careful when you use pictures on Flickr though because only Creative Commons photos do not have to be cited in the usual way. When you use this kind of photos, put a caption on the bottom of the photo and label image courtesy of (the author’s name).
Son of Citations, Easy Bib and Tiny URL
As mentioned above, writing the correct bibliography is extremely hard and time consuming. The right website can make your life way easier. These two sites above are sites that will help you create the proper citation. Basically enter the website and the information and they would put it into the correct format for you. For the site Easy Bib, if you enter the site, they automatically find some of the information for you and tell you from their database whether the site is reliable. However, sometimes these sites make small mistakes so always check before you turn in your work. Tiny URL is a site that will shorten an extremely long and complicated web address into something really short. When you have a very long url, it is required to be shortened or else points might be taken off.
Chemistry In the Community 5e
This site is dedicated to the students that are taking chemistry next year. Personally, I used this site to learn my vocabularies for Chemistry. I hated to carry the books home but the book was crucial for vocabularies in that class so I searched online and found this site. When you log on, and register as a student, you will find a page called Interactive ChemCom Media for Teachers and Students: Interactive Activities. When you click on it, there will be a pop out window and it has an overview of the book and if you click on tools, it will lead you to a periodic table, a glossary and a calculator. Personally I think the most useful tool is the glossary. It gives us the definition that we were looking for (electronic dictionaries may not provide scientific definitions) and it only a really short time.
College Board: APs (Macro Economics)
If you are taking an AP course next year, check out the College Board. It gives you an explanation of what the course is about. It also has a couple questions from the previous AP tests that will help you imagine and prepare for the test. The link above is linked to the Macro Economics page. College Board provides questions from 2001 to 2012. Not only does it provide the questions, it also provides the scoring guidelines. The best way to find the sample free response questions and scoring guidelines is to search in Google. Type: College Board AP (the course you’re taking) sample questions, and you’ll find them.
HippoCampus
This is a site recommended by our Math teacher, Mr. Vafai. This site focuses on Algebra and Geometry. You can select contents and then search for a specific topic and then finally click onto the topic and watch a video that will explain and teach the topic you chose.
Hope these websites are useful for you and your studies. If there are any other websites that you think is extremely helpful for student’s study life please comment below and share it with us.
1. Mix the sugar and butter together. 2. Put the egg into step 1 and melt the sugar. 3. Pour the cream into step 2 and mix them together. 4. Pour all of sieved powders and flour into step 3 and mix them using the slice. 5. Put the milk into step 4 and mix them together. 6. Lastly, put the chocolate chips in to step 5 and mix them. 7. Put the dough into muffin mold. 8. Put them in to oven for 25minutes in 175 celcius.
As technology improves it continues to play a vital part in our daily lives. We see people walking around with smartphones and tablets all the time. Portable gadgets have become integral to our everyday life; not only for adults but also younger kids have a large array of devices such as mp3 players, tablets, and smartphones at their disposal. Today I see my brother, who is in 4th grade, playing with toys like an iPad or his laptop. When I was his age I didn’t have any of that, I barely knew how to use a computer. Kids get in contact with technology at a younger age than ever before.
With technology being predominant in our lives how does it really impact us? We are already not able to live without it and it has become an important part of our life. Just imagine a day without technology. Just one day. If the most used electronical device, the mobile phone, would be unavailable just for a day things would not work out as well. Businesses would cease to run, and for example my dad, who works for Bombardier (A Canadian Company that constructs trains), needs his phone everyday to call business partners all over the world. Smartphones are necessary to the success of many things like multinational companies because businessmen need them to communicate with potential clients. Another example would be that our entire transportation system would be paralyzed. Cars, trains, airplanes, subways, etc. would not be in use and people would not be able to efficiently get to different places which would result in people being blocked in their homes not being able to do anything.
Now that technology is moving so fast, what can we expect to arrive in the following years? Companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google are starting to develop a new concept called smart homes. With the increasing number of devices in ones household, it would be great if they could all work together. This is what smart homes are all about. They connect your TV, your smartphone, computers, tablet, and basically any device in your house so that you can access all of your files, movies, and music from everywhere. With new technologies like cloud computing, all of this can be made possible.
To conclude people need to constantly be part of and adapt themselves to the extremely fast pace of technology. Often it changes so fast that people have a hard time keeping track of what’s changed. To keep yourself up to date with technology, I personally suggest to read articles on technology blogs such as engadget.com or gizmodo.com.