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Word. I like the idea of a desktop with no internet! What's the best offline encyclopedia in 2018 these days? Our family has a TV on wheels that gets put in th

Word. I like the idea of a desktop with no internet! What's the best offline encyclopedia in 2018 these days? Our family has a TV on wheels that gets put in the closet and brought out primarily on weekends. Just an Apple TV with a few ad-free channels. When my 7 yo comes home from school and discovers the TV has been put away, he just goes and plays with his legos! My phone has no games, but it has lots of apps for making music, and the kids are in to that (See Figure from Propellerhead/Allihoopa).

gpm 8y ago
> What's the best offline encyclopedia in 2018 these days? Probably Wikipedia? You can download a copy of it in your preferred language. I've been thinking about doing so, and would be interested if anyone has a favorite viewer.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  I'm not sure Wikipedia would be the best choice—you want kids to understand it's not a definitive information source and that you need to check the citation links for anything serious. To be very, very clear, I'm not anti-Wikipedia, I just think a "real" encyclopedia would be much better. Britannica stills sells DVD's that can be used offline.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > I'm not sure Wikipedia would be the best choice—you want kids to understand it's not a definitive information source and that you need to check the citation links for anything serious. That's, like, one of the first things we were taught about using an encyclopedia as a tool for research papers in elementary school, long before Wikipedia or even the Web was a thing. That's kind of the nature of tertiary sources, particularly broad-focus ones that boil down complex domains to short articles, including print encyclopedias. > To be very, very clear, I'm not anti-Wikipedia, I just think a "real" encyclopedia would be much better. The actual reviews that have been done, starting with Nature’s in 2005, have not supported the conclusion that Britannica or other print encyclopedias are much better than Wikipedia, either in terms of accuracy of factual content or in terms of things like providing appropriate citations.

gpm 8y ago

> What's the best offline encyclopedia in 2018 these days? Probably Wikipedia? You can download a copy of it in your preferred language. I've been thinking about doing so, and would be interested if anyone has a favorite viewer.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
I'm not sure Wikipedia would be the best choice—you want kids to understand it's not a definitive information source and that you need to check the citation links for anything serious. To be very, very clear, I'm not anti-Wikipedia, I just think a "real" encyclopedia would be much better. Britannica stills sells DVD's that can be used offline.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > I'm not sure Wikipedia would be the best choice—you want kids to understand it's not a definitive information source and that you need to check the citation links for anything serious. That's, like, one of the first things we were taught about using an encyclopedia as a tool for research papers in elementary school, long before Wikipedia or even the Web was a thing. That's kind of the nature of tertiary sources, particularly broad-focus ones that boil down complex domains to short articles, including print encyclopedias. > To be very, very clear, I'm not anti-Wikipedia, I just think a "real" encyclopedia would be much better. The actual reviews that have been done, starting with Nature’s in 2005, have not supported the conclusion that Britannica or other print encyclopedias are much better than Wikipedia, either in terms of accuracy of factual content or in terms of things like providing appropriate citations.