Week 10 Research Tools

It's very hard to give an overview of this week's topic -- research tools -- without getting lost in the endless options. I decided to focus on two tools that I thought would be useful in the ESL classroom . . . and I still found myself combating the urge to continue clicking on links.

The Simple English Wikipedia probably has the most relevance for the ESL classroom. Here students can find articles on topics in simple English. Of course, the list of topics available is not nearly as extensive as that on the regular English site. However, students can still find a wide range of topics for research papers and projects.

The George Washington Papers Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress provides information that teachers can use to enrich cultural or historical presentations. For example, there is a large exhibit about African American progress to full citizenship that contains interesting information that can be used to provide context for different works of literature. I clicked on the exhibit of the American Colony in Jerusalem from the late 19th century, but the website was not available. However, the link to the Bob Hope exhibit provided an extensive history of the movie industry's beginnings in vaudeville. This site is a good place to start if you have a specific topic in American culture or history that you'd like to present in an interesting manner.

Now I'm off to see what other sites my fellow classmates have discovered.