Historical Encyclopedia Entries, Comparing and Contrasting

Possible writing/thinking assignment for your high school students.

Pick a topic.  Look it up in this 1911 encyclopedia and make a general list of salient facts.
Look it up on wikipedia or infogalactic and do the same.
Google it or look it up in a recent book at your library and do the same.

What has changed? What's been added, what has been removed?  What are the reasons? Why do you think so?

Here are some possible topics:

Islam (in older references it might be called Mahommedan Religion)
1911
Infogalactic (a replacement for Wikipedia that attempts to avoid the silliest Wikipedia editing wars, like 8,000 edits over yogurt/yoghurt or over 20,000 edits over the proper way to refer to the Wii, or....)

Echinoderms (sea urchins, sand dollars, sea stars and so on)
Infogalactic

Christmas
Infogalactic


Christianity
Infogalactic

You can find Wikipedia.  If you're searching for some unusual but interesting writing topics for your teen, you might look into becoming an editor at either or both of the above sites, and then pick a topic and research it and write an entry.