Resources! Oh the beauty of the internet; and all to help YOU!
At some point in all of our academic careers we've all looked like this. ->
Our goal is to make life a little less stressful for you to find the resources you need to write papers, prepare for SATs, college, and whatever you might need in your academic career at St. Edmund Prep and beyond, without having to resort to this. ->
Links!
All of these come with explanations so you know what the website is for! Towards the bottom you might see some more fun links to other things, such as sites where you can learn things on your own. I've put them into categories to make life a little easier. If you know a website that you feel should be on here be sure to let us know in the proper form under the Write For Us! page on the navigation bar under More... If something really helped you, then let me know too using the Contact Us! in the navigation bar under Write For Us!
Research
This is for whatever papers you may have to write. http://www.stedmundprep.org/academics/studentresources - This is St. Edmund Prep's resource page which includes several online databases, help with citations, and links for help in specific subjects. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/1/ - This is Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (aka OWL). This tells you how to cite properly in MLA format manually (typing it up yourself) which is useful for college classes, especially IB classes, and later in college. It also gives the proper MLA format for the paper as well as the citations. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/1/ - This is another part of Purdue's Online Writing Lab where you can learn all about how to write essays in general including grammar and somewhere there should be a section on thesis statements. This is the place to go to improve your writing if you struggle with essays. http://www.bklynpubliclibrary.org/eresources (Brooklyn Library) and http://www.queenslibrary.org/research/articles-db (Queens Library) - These are the Articles & Databases page from both the Brooklyn and Queens library respectively. These sites have a more extensive list of databases, which only require your library card which is FREE!!! There are plenty of resources on this page but something worth pointing out are e-book sites such as Open Library (https://openlibrary.org/) where you can search for any book and see where you can borrow a physical copy somewhere or, if the book is old, you can possibly find an e-book version. This can save a pointless trip to the library where you can skim through a book this way to see if you should bother to go get it. (If it's that old you would probably have to get it out of storage which can be a pain, depending on the library, just to get a book you're not going to use.) |
College Stuff
Getting ready for college is tough especially with all of those standardized tests, hopefully these will help you out. http://www.stedmundprep.org/academics/guidance - This is the guidance page of the St. Edmund Prep website. The links include links to the SAT and ACT websites so that you can register for them. It also includes links to free scholarship search websites. (Remember to go for the lesser scholarships too! If you write an essay that takes you an hour and the scholarship is for $500 then your making $500 an hour! These really add up too keep that in mind!) http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1481004-tips-on-how-to-get-a-2400.html - This guy explains in detail how he got a perfect score on the SAT. He includes what resources he used, like a website that has all the grammar rules tested on the SAT. (I know the SAT is changing in 2016 so this applies to the current test, not so sure about the next one) |
Learning On Your Own (The more fun stuff)
OpenCourseWare
Sometimes there are things you want to learn and there are no classes in school about it or maybe it doesn't fit in your schedule. A good place to start for Apple users is iTunes U where there are free courses on everything from photography to history and Shakespeare to coding. Many colleges also have OpenCourseWare or free classes online. You can Google search most popular colleges and you can normally find something like this. There is also a common initiative that many colleges are getting involved with... https://www.edx.org/ - This site was founded as a joint effort between MIT and Harvard to offer free courses online. Many elite colleges are involved in the project from Columbia and Caltech as well as colleges outside the country such as the University of Hong Kong and the University of Toronto. You do the courses on your own time and it's all free. They currently give out a free certificate for a lot of their courses called the Honor Code Certificate. It really doesn't mean much but I suppose it could help support that you took the course if you write about it in your college application essay (colleges like it when you take initiative). And you could put it up on the fridge so everyone knows about your hard work. |
Learning to Code
Technology is becoming a bigger part of our lives and so now everyone could use adding coding skills to their repertoire; everyone needs a computer nerd nowadays! http://www.codecademy.com/learn - I suggest this highly because I'm currently learning HTML/CSS through this! I will most likely be using this for the site your now on when I learn enough. It's very good at making you practice as a way of learning and leaves some room for creative fun. They helpfully put the approximate amount of time that a course will take as well as show your progress as you complete the course. There are several languages to get you started and there are hints available at certain points if you get stuck. (You might even want to create your own site after this! There are plenty of free options including Weebly which I'm using for this. If you create a useful website let me know I can put it up here to help you out.) https://code.org/ - Also has lessons on coding. Just watch the video at least because it's so inspiring (at least for me the super computer nerd). You also see some of the most innovative people in the business, including Gabe Newell from Valve (I totally nerd-ed out when I saw him!), Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg creator of Facebook. It's also cool to see the awesome offices these guys have; they live like kings there. There seems to be a few learn to make your own games type things as well as some more unique projects. These seem to be mostly more basic though but check them out. |