Pioneer Library is one of the best resources of information available to students on the internet.  It can be accessed at pioneer.uen.org.  If logging on at home, you will need a username and password.  These can be obtained from any teacher or school librarian.  Here are some of the resources available:

Culturegrams - For excellent information on any country or state, this is the place to go.  It has flags that can be printed out in color or an outline that can then be colored by hand.  it has topics listed on the left about the land and climate, history, people, customs, lifestyle, and society.  The contact information gives an address to write to or website to visit where you can get more information about the place and use however you want.  It is a great resource for reports.  At the top right is a link that says "Graphs and Tables."  Here you can select different countries or states and specific topics to compare.  When creating a graph, it takes literally seconds to create a colorful bar graph that makes things visually easy to understand.  This graph can then b printed out or saved as a picture and imported into another program.  Last but not least, at the top right of every country is a link that says "Generate Citation."  This gives the citation to you, already made, that can be copied and pasted into a bibliography or Works Cited page.

EBSCO - Ebsco is probably the best database on the internet.  First go to "All Databases" then make a check mark next to "Academic Search Premier" and continue.  Under the search box in tiny writing is "Advanced Search."  Click there.  Before searching, scroll down and click "Full Text" and put some dates in the "Published Dates From" section.  The dates you put depend on how recent you want your information.  Then go back up to the search boxes and use key words only (no sentences) to search your topic.  Use and, or, and not from the boxes to narrow your search down to what you really want.  Important Note:  The articles in Ebsco are already researched and authenticated, published by experts in their field.  You will not find the garbage here that you will find by searching on Google.  When you find the articles you want, the whole thing will be right there (because you clicked full text) with the sources and everything you need.  Best of all, on the right in tiny letters it says "Cite."  Click there and you will get the citation in both MLA and APA to copy and paste into your bibiliography or works cited page!  It can't get any easier!

eMedia - This is mainly for teachers, but can also be used for students if they wish.  It is a collection of short videos in all subject areas that can be downloaded or viewed online. 

Sirs Dicoverer and Sirs Knowledge Source - both excellent databases of good information.  Again, use "Advanced Search" and use keywords for a better search.  Sirs Knowledge Source has a handy list of current debatable topics listed right on their first page.  This is great for just coming up with an idea!

Soundzabound - What fun this is!  Soundzabound has music and sound clips that can be downloaded for free to use in PowerPoint or movie projects, as well as anything else you want to do with them.  Many of the sound clips come in various lengths so you can download just the length you want.  To find them, first click on "Categories" (on the left), then select a category and click which ones you'd like to hear.  To download, click "Download MP3" on the right and save to whatever file you want.  To put it in to PowerPoint, chose "Insert" then "Sound" and "from file..." and pick the file where you saved it.  There's scary sounds, funny sounds, music from many countries, sound effects, and many many more!

World Book Encyclopedia - Can search any topic found in a print encyclopedia, mostly people, places, things, and events.  There are pictures that can be copied into another project, and aagain, you'll find the citation at the bottom of every page that can be copied into a biliography or works cited page.  Back on the front page of World Book you'll also find a link that says "Citation Builder."  With this, you can just fill in the blanks of any source you get information from (newspaper, interview, book, magazine, etc.) and it will create the citation for you!  Another great new addition to World Book is Timelines.  With this you can create really cool timelines of events and put pictures with it as well.