The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
– Albert Einstein
Even in the age of Google, general knowledge still matters. These awesome web-sites will help you to expand your general knowledge from Art and History to Science and Philosophy.
Enjoy! :)
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- Miscellaneous -
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Highbrow — 10-day courses delivered in easy-to-digest emails every morning.
WikiWand — Slick new interface for Wikipedia.
Britannica — General knowledge encyclopaedia.
University of Reddit —Web-site where Redditers could teach each other.
TodayILearned — SubReddit where people share interesting general knowledge facts.
Daily Curiosity — App to learn 5 things a day from Curiosity.com.
Quora — A question-and-answer websitewhere questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users.
BrainPump — Library of entertaining videos on general knowledge topics.
Khan Academy — Service offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace.
TED Ed — Library of short educational videos.
Socratic — Educational Q&A site where students ask questions and our community teaches them the answer.
Crash Course — Educational YouTube channel.
Mental Floss — Test your knowledge with amazing and interesting facts, trivia, quizzes, and brain teaser games.
Brain Pickings — Insightful long form posts on life, art, science, design, history, philosophy, and more.
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- Art -
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WikiArt — User-editable visual art encyclopedia.
Art History Resources — Great collection of art history resources.
Visual Arts Cork — Encyclopedia of visual art.
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- Science -
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Science Daily — Breaking scientific news and the latest scientific discoveries.
How Stuff Works — Site with explanations and colorful illustrations related to earth science, life science, and other wonders of the physical world.
Scitable — Science library that acts as a classroom resource as well as a personal learning tool.
Space.com— Massive repository of information on the heavenly bodies, including space flight missions and space-related technologies.
Scientific American — One of the most thorough resources available online for learning and teaching science.
Livescience — Website features groundbreaking developments in science, space and technology.
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- History -
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History.com — Historical information ranging from great speeches to facts about this day in history.
Stuff You Missed in History Class — Podcast which discusses the interesting aspects of many historical events.
Biography.com — Source for true stories about notable people.
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- Philosophy -
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Plato.Stanford.edu — Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
Iep.utm.edu — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Philosophy Pages — Narrative survey of the historical development of Western philosophy.
Philosimply — Resource for anyone interested in learning more about philosophy, history and religion.
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How do children acquire general knowledge without it becoming a tedious exercise? In a 12-part weekly series,S. Ganesa Subramanianoffers simple tips
What is ‘general knowledge’? How does one acquire it? Why is it needed? We have time and again pondered these questions as children and even complained about being compelled to expand our knowledge by persistent parents and teachers. In fact, we would be told that general knowledge was imperative, if we were to succeed in life.
However, our complaint then was not about general knowledge per se, but about the imposition of newspapers on us, many a time robbing us of our leisure hours. So, how do teachers and parents go about encouraging children to acquire general knowledge without the pursuit becoming a chore?
This is what this series of articles attempts to do — change children’s attitude to general knowledge.
For this change to happen, we need to understand children and the way they learn. We must take cognizance of the three stages of schooling — primary, secondary and higher secondary. Children, at the primary level, predominantly tend to imbibe values such as discipline, punctuality, teamwork and sharing and habits like going to school – being part of an external environment, which is inhabited by people other than family. At this age, they must not be pushed but given opportunities to ask questions.
At the secondary and higher secondary levels, children are exposed to various concepts through textbooks and acquire knowledge which forms the basis of their future life, especially career. It is at this age that teachers/parents need to constructively intervene and help them look beyond textbooks and build general knowledge. But these being difficult adolescent years, it becomes a challenge to make learning beyond textbooks interesting.
The focus, therefore,should be on the following — 1. Achieving clarity on what general knowledge is and how it can be built up; helping youngsters read newspapers; relating news with what is read in textbooks; providing children with newspapers and helping them understand the real-time application of concepts; and enabling them to prepare for various competitive exams (college/career).
It is also essential to realise that general knowledge is vital not only for competing in exams but it also helps in personality development. Being informed and being able to connect with happenings around oneself makes one a well-rounded personality. Besides making people well-informed and interesting, general knowledge helps build their leadership and interpersonal skills.
In the next article, we will discuss this.
(The writer is the director of Ganesh’s IAS Academy)
Being informed and being able to connect with happenings around oneself makes one a
well-rounded personality
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