Conquer Research Paper Paranoia
With the school year in full swing, the tide of research papers will soon start if it hasn’t already reached your family’s shores. This annual rite has many parents riding a wave of anxiety and self-doubt in anticipation of having to help with difficult assignments in intimidating courses.
Coming face to face with heady academic subject matter years – or decades – since you last wrote a research paper is challenging to say the least. There’s no shame in that; every parent feels it to one degree or another.
It doesn’t help that the Internet is full of millions of pages of questionable content. Many websites claim to be expert produced, and even look the part, but in reality are publishers of completely bogus content. It can be a daunting task to tell fact from fiction.
Even so, helping a child with a research paper doesn’t have to be an overwhelming task. In fact, with the advent of the Internet, the task has never been easier. You just have to know where to look for high quality . There are numerous and diverse sources of quality information that is presented with a focus on age-appropriate content.
Here’s an easy reference list of some of the best kid-friendly research sources available on the Internet:
Library of Congress: At www.loc.gov, a wealth of research paper quality information on a slew of topics is available in the “Kids, Families” section. Best part: It’s hard to be the Library of Congress as a respected research source.
CIA: Yes, that CIA. And no, they won’t have to kill you if they tell you. The Central Intelligence Agency maintains a robust website at www.cia.gov that hosts a large variety of useful data. Once on the homepage, click on the “Publications” tab. Here you will find “The World Factbook” and “World Leaders” online directory.
Kids Click!: Kent State University’s School of Library and Information Science runs this extensive collection of resources that span a range of categories. Kids Click! This resource allows students to research using a specialized search engine that is geared to guide them to kid-specific academic material.
Fact Monster: Pearson Education publishes this online resource of encyclopedia-like information through Information Please. Click through pages for citable materials appropriate for elementary-aged research papers.
Awesome Library: This kid-specific search engine is powered by Google and available in about a dozen languages. Awesome Library uses 37,000 organized resources to provide information on just about any topic imaginable.
These five sites have all the information needed to develop a finely-researched term paper that is “A” material. With these sites, the mystery and worry of Internet research is a thing of the past.
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