In a lifetime, a person will come across at least one, but usually many people whom he or she admires. Whether this person invented something that changed civilization, wrote a good book, discovered something magnificent, composed a symphony or painted a beautiful picture, they did something to become a well-known and much-esteemed member of society. World history, certainly, has provided us with countless heroes, but even in our daily lives we can find those people who make a sacrifice for someone or something that is important to them.
There is one thing that makes a hero truly a hero. A true hero does not do something for the fame and fortune of it, rather, it is done for the sake of humanity. This is the reason why these heroes should be cherished and remembered - not only for the 21st century, but for all eternity.
-Amanda S. and Dawn M.
The KIDS Report is a biweekly publication produced by K-12 students as a resource to other K-12 students. It is an ongoing, cooperative effort of 15 classrooms from around the world. Teachers assist and provide support; however, students select, evaluate and annotate all resources included in every issue of the KIDS Report.
The KIDS Report is published with a generous grant from John and Tashia Morgridge and with the support of the General Library System of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This issue of KIDS, dated June 6, 2000, was written and produced by Dawn Morden's seventh grade reading/enrichment class at Theodore Roosevelt Junior High in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
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Biography.com
http://www.biography.com/
Biography.com is an excellent site for finding biographies about heroes and other famous people. The site is organized and attractive. Created by A&E Television Networks, Biography.com contains many different links such as the week's top ten biographies, a place to buy biographies, a book club, a feature article from Biography magazine, trivia and a poll. There's also a special feature called "Born this Day" that has information about an important person that was born on that day. Every link contains relevant information to the topic. Another special part of the Biography.com site is the millennium section. This section contains the top one hundred people of the millennium and links to information about them. The millennium list provides summaries of the most influential people of the past 1,000 years. Biography.com is a very good site for reports or other educational activities.
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Biography-center.com
http://www.biography-center.com/
Biography-center.com is an extremely informative and helpful site. In fact, it indexes over 10,000 biographies! This site provides links to other sites that are very colorful and attractive. We couldn't believe how easy and convenient it is. All you have to do is type in the name of a person and automatically you have an array of matches. From personal experiences, we have found this site to be quite educational. Overall, we feel that Biography-center.com is a great site.
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The Book of Gods, Goddesses, Heroes and Characters of Mythology
http://www.cybercomm.net/~grandpa/gdsindex.html
This site is a virtual book online that tells the stories of the ancient gods, heroes, and stories of mythology. While these are not exactly true heroes that were alive, they still have heroic qualities and they provide lessons by which to live. The creator of this site has compiled an incredible amount of data about heroes and cultural information from books, encyclopedias, and other sources listed on the Bibliography page. This site can help all students interested in mythology.
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Lives, the Biography Resource
http://amillionlives.com/
Amillionlives.com is a very helpful resource. It was easy to access and the information was alphabetized for easier use. The site includes "links to thousands of biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, narratives, oral histories and more. Individual lives of the famous, the infamous, and the not so famous." The site also includes links to special collections of heroes and other people such as African Americans, Women, Holocaust Survivors and Rescuers, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders and those connected with the U.S. Civil War. We found the content to be extremely informative with several interesting facts that could be found. The site is fast while downloading the information; it provides everything needed in a matter of seconds. Lives, the Biography Resource seems to be a reliable source - the site is updated often, there are no fees, and the author includes information about himself.
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WomenInWorldHistory.com
http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/
I found this site to be highly interesting, educational and incredibly informative. It is very easy to navigate your way from topic to topic. This site provides large amounts of information about diverse groups of women including rulers and female heroes. Although the site is very informative, it is not very interesting visually. Pictures are few and far between, however, the ones that are there are highly detailed and explain a lot about the passage they go with. In addition to information about women, there are links to classroom resources for teachers. I recommend this site to anyone interested in women and the roles they have played in our world culture.
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Women's biographies: Distinguished Women of Past and Present
http://www.distinguishedwomen.com
Although incomplete and still in the process of being created, as many sites are, this is a good site to go to for a report especially if you're asked to search for information on women! It has a simple design that makes it easy to find your way around. You can search by name or by subject (field of contribution) and once into a biography, there are pictures and lots of information. The author's name and e-mail address are right on the home page. Additionally, this site includes resources and links to more information, but, given the size of the biographies you may not need it. Lastly, this site requires no fee or name to gain access. If I have to do a report on any famous women, this would be the first site I'd go to.
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Biographical Dictionary
http://www.s9.com/biography/
If you're ever in need of a one-stop web site for brief biographical information, the Biographical Dictionary at s9.com is an excellent and fast source of information. Not only does it cover "more than 28,000 notable men and women who have shaped our world from ancient times to the present day," the site is very easy to use and loads very quickly. Although it contains very few images, the information is extremely useful and provides a great starting point when writing a biography report. At this site you can type in a person's name or a keyword and the desired information will come up. We would recommend this site for all ages.
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Life Online: Top People
http://www.lifemag.com/Life/millennium/people/01.html
A simple, but redeeming section of the LIFE magazine site, one could learn some valuable and interesting things here about heroes of the 2nd millennium. This is LIFE magazine's list of the 100 people who made the Millennium, ranked in order of importance. This site has an easy way of letting you find your way about its contents. If you're writing a report and need one more fact or two to wrap it up, this would be a good site to go to.
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These Internet resources were evaluated on the basis of Site Selection Guidelines that the students developed. Questions and comments can be sent to the facilitating teacher at Theodore Roosevelt Junior High, Dawn Morden, at dmorden@aasdcat.com
2000 Copyright by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the entire KIDS Report provided this paragraph, including the copyright notice, is preserved on all copies.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A Publication of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries