Facticity

Overview

I’ve come across a number of very useful sites for educating yourself on various topics. When I was younger and still in college, I used to surf Microsoft’s Bookshelf and Encarta CDs, jumping from topic to topic and learning a little bit about a huge number of things, then focusing in on some of particular interest and getting more information from the net or the library. Now you can do the same thing with the internet itself, using different sites to compare their information on and explanations of topics of interest. There are so many great sites out there now with general information that I haven’t used a CD based reference in years.

Sites for Everyone

Wikipedia – The current top of the heap in encyclopedias. Wikipedia is an open source and user contributed knowledge source. A user-contributed and editor-policed encyclopedia seems at first glance to be a very risky place to use as a reference, but I’ve found it very accurate in the areas in which I have expertise.

HowStuffWorks – If you’re a curious sort who likes to know how things work “underneath the hood”, this is the site for you. A naturally curious person could spend days or weeks straight on this site before getting bored and needing a break. It’s that good.

Sites for Children

These sites are safer for children (content-wise) and their content may be more at a child’s level. There may still be good stuff there for adults.

Sites for Adults

These sites are likely to be of interest primarily to teens and adults, because of the maturity required to appreciate the tone or content of the site.