Online tools to Research for School Work on the Internet

The internet has made conducting research for school work easier for students and scholars; unlike in the early days when you have to visit a library to conduct your research for school work. Today information is readily available from your personal computer, cyber café or even a mobile phone.

Considering the Hugh database of user-submitted contents on the WWW, Information on virtually any topic of your interest can be found on the internet upon diligent research. However, this creates a bit of problem on deciding which information is complete and accurate to help with school work. There is freedom of expression on the World Wide Web, with little regulation on published contents, so anyone can create a website or blog and upload opinion-based content online. To make a good research for your school work, you need to locate and cite credible sources.

Notwithstanding, there are credible sources of information on the internet for students to research for school work, term paper, assignments, projects etc. You can conduct your academic research on the internet from sources of scholarly journals, current news, books, credible magazines and general information. Here are some online tools and ways to help you as a student or scholar locate scholarly journals and research based information to research for school work:

Use Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to search relevant works across the world of scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites and literatures. With the Google Scholar search tool embedded on this page below, you can search diverse sources from one convenient place to help with school work. Students can use this online tool to learn about key scholarly literature in any area of research for school work.
The information you find from this source may not be complete or accurate, however, it’s more likely to be credible (considering the sources) than running a conventional Google search.

Locate reputable website (.edu, .gov)
Find reliable statistical articles on government (.gov) and educational (.edu) websites. You can identify these websites from the web addresses (domain name .gov and .edu). However, this does not guarantee 100% credibility. There are websites on .com and .org domains that are also credible enough.

Subscribe to RSS Feeds
RSS feed which stands for Really Simple Syndication feed, is a (not-so) new technology that allow you to subscribe for an immediate update when new information is posted on a website. With this online tool, you can keep up with current news from constantly updated websites. If you are a subscriber on AfterSchoolAfrica or any other website, you are already making use of this amazing technology. If you don’t want to cluster your email box with updates from several sources, you can subscribe to RSS reader alternatively. RSS feeds will practically help you collect current events and updates from a particular topic to your RSS reader.

Use search engines
Use advanced search feature on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com and other popular search engines to filter your results and find the information you’re looking for. Here is an article on how to find information (particularly) on Google. You need to understand the use of Keywords to get the most relevant search results. To get the best of these online tools, use different search engines to search the same topic. Different search engines rank web pages differently. So what you find on Yahoo search result will likely be different from Google search results. Compare websites/webpages you find on the first relevant results on different search engines for better resource.

Find Books on Amazon
Amazon is considered the largest online retailer for Selection of Books of diverse topics. Amazon started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, and toys. However, it’s a credible source for purchasing academic related books and books on any other topic of interest. It also provides international shipping to certain countries for its products.

There are other sources and tools online to help with your school work. You can start from these resources to have an interesting experience in your research for school work.