The World Factbook provides national-level information on countries, territories, and dependencies. It is an authoritative source. The information includes a summary of each entity’s people, history, economy, geography, communications, transportation, and more. It is updated every few weeks.

This reference provides basic and up-to-date information, including a map, lots of basic geography, resources, and population facts, government, military and transnational issues.  There is also a link that displays a gallery of country flags.

Fact Monster contains a wealth of resources.  It has an almanac, atlas, dictionary and encyclopedia.  You can have fun with their games and quizzes.  There’s a homework center, with information sorted by school subject.  It’s an award-winning and much reviewed kid-friendly site. Reading level and content suitable for grades 3-8.

Google Book Search enables teachers and students to browse books online, search for text, and even download pdf versions of out-of-copyright books.  In addition to viewing parts of books, you’re given options to purchase them or borrow them online.  For additional teacher resources and ideas for using Google Book Search in the classroom, click here.

Google Earth is a downloadable satellite imagery-based view of the earth from space to street level, that can be used by teachers and students in their studies of geography, the earth, economics, demographics and transportation.  It can be added to your iGoogle page.  The newest feature of Google Earth, Sky, lets student view galaxies, stars and planets.  Teachers, see examples of how to use it in the classroom.

A web-based version of Google Earth for Chrome browsers is now available. The app is also available for iPad/iPhone and Android devices. Note that it runs best on most recent smartphones with memory upgrades.

This picture dictionary is in several languages:  English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.  Your can browse for words by alphabetic index or subject area such as tools, school or sports.  There are also several interactive games in each of these languages, including word scramble, flashcards. fill-in-the-blank, stinky spelling and straight recall.