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World Book

World Book (K-Grade 12) is the leading online encyclopedia. The website is accessed through Focused Education Resources and the BC Digital Classroom.

Focused Education Resources is a not-for-profit, shared services organization that supports excellence in K-12 education in British Columbia. It is a consortium of BC public school districts and independent schools that work together to create accessible learning resources for BC schools. Within Focused Education Resources is the BC Digital Classroom, which houses many of the subscriptions available to HCOS and Flex families.

Click below to learn more about the specific features offered by World Book.

Early Learning (K-Grade 3)

Early Learning supports early elementary students with “Trek’s Travels,” “Welcome to Reading,” and “Know It.” These sites include narrative stories, interactive games, and a visual encyclopedia to support early reading, numeracy, and knowledge. Pre-readers will enjoy listening to stories. Readers can control the story's pace as word-by-word highlighting guides them. They can also play games and enjoy sorting, painting, and matching puzzles. Print-and-go activities will also interest your primary-aged students.

World Book Kids (K-Grade 5)

World Book Kids is an online encyclopedia designed for a younger primary elementary audience with easy-to-read articles, illustrations, and engaging activities. Students can enjoy science projects, experiments, biographical searches, animal comparisons, and mapping searches, including World Book Maps with printable PDF maps.

World Book Student (Grades 5-8)

World Book Student gives elementary and middle school students access to encyclopedia and reference articles, biographies, videos, animations, historical features, educational tools, and activities. Students will learn about research skills needed to complete research projects, including the planning process, evaluating sources, and creating citations. Students will also learn how to use MyResearch, which allows them to save all their research. Students can also create timelines to make their social study projects sparkle with 21st-century options. The biography centre will help students research famous Canadians and inspiring people. Surf the Ages website is for ancient civilizations research. Quizzes and activities are made easy for teachers and students to access. In the Headlines provides a history feed from news of the day.

World Book Discover (Grades 3-9)

World Book Discover is a collection of resources for differentiated learning, including read-aloud, text translation, video, and easy-to-read information. This resource supports students who need additional support with research articles, tools, and multimedia and interactive videos. There is also a life skills component to help students build financial literacy and health education skills.

World Book Advanced (Grades 9-12)

World Book Advanced gives students access to refined optimized searching of encyclopedias, multimedia, eBooks (including Shakespeare and Dickens, library, and other classics), and primary source databases. It also includes research tools such as dictionaries, atlas, and research guides with bibliographical citation builders. Students have the ability to create individual accounts, save their content, create timelines, and develop citations in MLA format. Primary and secondary sources are covered in all databases. The Pathfinders feature helps students research popular topics and links to media, biographies, government, and history.

World Book Timelines (K-Grade 12)

World Book Timelines is optimized for tablets and offers hundreds of pre-generated timelines across eight broad topics, which cover various time periods in history or span the life of historical public figures. Featuring more personalization and customization options than any other World Book site, World Book Timelines allows users to create their own timeline from scratch, adding events, descriptions, and media. 

L’Encyclopédie Découverte (Grades 8-12)

L'Encyclopédie Découverte offers students a colourful engagement in the French language. Categories include: People, Exploring the World, Science and Math, Religions of the World, Plants and Animals, History, Arts and Literature, and Sports and Hobbies. Rich with images and engaging activities, L'Encyclopédie Découverte gives students added value and experience alongside their French language studies. This site is for students who are already fluent in French and is not meant to be a language-learning resource.

Logging In

There are two steps to log in to World Book.


Step 1Navigate to BC Digital Classroom, then select the icon for the World Book resource you wish to access.


Step 2: Enter the username and password for World Book from the Subs/Passwords tab in the Search Portal.

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Navigation & Use

World Book Online Video Tutorials is a collection of brief video tutorials to help familiarize users with the resources available on World Book.

World Book Apps Webinar is a detailed explanation of resources available to Grades 3-9 students.

Saving Your Research

World Book allows students to set up their own “My Research” page for saving their work. Click the hamburger menu (three lines) at the top right corner to access.

Next, select “My Research” from the navigation options.

Finally, select “Create an Account” to set up your folder with your username and password.


Users can now save a WorldBook article to their "My Research" page by selecting the "Tools" setting in the upper right corner of the article.