The National Archives has created a collection of thousands of its digital records and images to help K-12 students learn about US and world history. The collection spans the 1700s to the present, and includes hundreds of primary source documents. Students can search for records and images on a specific topic, or by historical era.

For teachers, there are resources for using the collection in the classroom. These include activities for analyzing documents, compare and contrast, finding a sequence, making connections, weighing evidence, interpreting data, and more. When teachers register for a free account, they can create their own activities on the site, and have students login to participate in them.

There is now an app version of National Archives DocsTeach available for iPad only

This is an encyclopedia of symbols, signs, flags and glyphs. It contains background articles and dozens of symbol groups, from astronomy and astrology to weather and wingdings. The search feature works best when you know the word for the symbol. Typing the symbol in the search box
(such as Ω) did not produce usable results. But the index by theme is easy to navigate if you know the category for a symbol, such as mathematic, medical, or even hobo signs.

Get answers to your science and technology-related research topics from this Library of Congress reference site. Reading level and content is suitable for grades 3-8. There are archived questions and answers categorized in kid-relatable disciplines such as inventions, animals and farming. Each answer includes related websites and suggested titles for further reading on the topic.

All of the questions on the site were asked by researchers and answered by librarians from the Library’s Science Reference Services. Kids can click a link to ask their own questions.
Replies generally take five business days.

Kentucky Virtual Library offers two excellent guides for K-12 students on how to do research for a project, paper or presentation.  For younger students, grades 3-6, there is a graphic guide.  For older students, grades 7-12, there is a modular guide.

The How to Do Research Guide for kids uses an engaging, colorful flowchart.  It creates a step-by-step walk-through of the process.  And it has lots of useful tips along the way, such as the five-finger test for figuring out if a source is a good one for a student’s reading level. It provides kids  with lots of ideas for different ways they can share what they’ve learned in their research,

The How to Do Research guide for teens provides a modular, detailed walk-through of the six steps:

1. Choosing and narrowing a topic
2. Searching for reliable resources
3. Taking notes and citing sources
4. Creating an outline
5. Planning, thinking and writing, and
6. Creating alternate products

The modules for each of these steps is very detailed, with an accompanying interactive outline of the process.

Although the site is centered around the Kentucky Virtual Library, you can use these research ideas for your own local library and Internet sources.  This site is a Gold Web Award winner.

Get answers to all your science questions on the MadSci Network. Their “collective cranium of scientists” at top universities, businesses and government answer students’ questions. You can also browse or search their archive of more than 36,000 questions and answers.

Note that the search-by-subject feature of their archive search is a bit quirky. I was unable to get results by browsing the entire archive under a specific subject. But I was able to get results by selecting specific years and months. The keyword search feature works much better.