Search+Engines

Search Engines...were not created equal. Share your thoughts about which would be best for your grade level or teaching area and why below.
 * A YouTube video below shares information on how to create a custom search. This is a wonderful way for your students to begin searching using all search strategies that are age appropriate without being exposed to the whole Internet.
 * Your task is to make sure the video stays at the bottom of the page. Good luck!

As I did a bit of my own exploring for search engines that would be age appropriate for my first grade classroom, I liked the following for my young researchers because they are fun, refreshing, easy to navigate, and they make it easy and safe for my students to find information from many different resources. :
 * __**AskKids**__-a search engine designed exclusively for young students ages 6-12. It is free, secure, and a fun way for kids to quickly and easily research a vaiety of topics.
 * __**KidsClick**__-is a gated search tool developed for kids by librarians and is searchable by reading level, subject area, and resources.
 * __**KidRex**__-is a new kid safe search engine powered by Google custom search.
 * __**SweetSearch**__-is a search engine that searches only the sites have been reviewed and approved by a team of librarians, teachers, and research experts.

//** Jennifer McPhillips **//

I began to investigate some of the sites mentioned in Chapter 2 and my favorites for my second graders are the following:

Ask Kids is a great site for my young second graders. When I visited, I loved the way it was presented in an exciting, colorful, and engaging way, which is so important for young learners.

Yahoo Kids is another great site for my second graders. I found it to be a little bit more cumbersome than Ask Kids but both would be excellent search engines to introduce to my young learners.

I LOVED [] Quintura for Kids- I thought it was visually accessible and easy to navigate for my young learners!

http://www.kartoo.com/ Kartoo is another visual search engine that might be appropriate for my young learners, however I like Quintura for Kids and Ask Kids and Yahoo Kids better.

Karen McDavitt

//_// __Mike__

__I had difficulty accessing several of the sites mentioned. I thought that Browsys Advanced Finder sounded good, but all I could find was a review, not the actual site. Maybe I was missing something? And, unlike Karen, for some reason I could not access the Quintura site, even trying different browsers?__

__I also found out that Clusty changed its name. It is now Yippy. I found this site to be very good. One aspect that I thought would be very helpful is a menu of classifications on the left side that could help students to narrow searches and make more effective searches. For this reason alone I would highly recommend this site!__

__In addition, I would never discount Google. Tea"ching students some of the more advanced search techniques, allowing for academic searches, synonym searches, etc.,can certainly help students to be more efficient searchers of the web.__

__I would also recommend some of the data bases that are available, either through the school or online.__

I feel the same Mike- Teaching Google advanced techniques is a must. Included in this would be image and voice searches. I also looked forward to Browsys and was disappointed when I learned it was no longer available. Found the same in regards to other links and sites for teacher and student use. Airset that comes up in Chapter 4, I believe, is a wonderful space where the environment is much like that of your computer desktop. I received the notice on Friday that they've closed up shop...but tried to make it work through many varied strategies. The message is- look to applications as transferable skills and features that you'll use to pick your next favorite search engine, organizing tool, etc. Joanne

__ Julia: __

__ Like Mike, I too had some difficulty accessing a number of the sites. I was getting a "webpage not available" message or as in the case of Pandia, the search engine was shut down. One time when I looked into kids.quintura.com I got on and it looked really good. I liked the layout of nice clean lines, without a lot of clutter or ads. I liked the word cloud associated with the key word in the search. But if I cant get on it very often, I guess it doesn't do me a lot of good. Upon further investigation, I did find a nice resource for kid-friendly search engines at: __

__http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-search-engines-kids-parents-safe-browsing/__

__ Discovering this blog opened the door to some wonderful search engines that were appropriate for my Kinders. :) __ __** KidRex ** is a VERY kid-friendly custom search engine for kids. It uses Safe Search and tries to keep all results as "antiseptic as possible". __


 * Aga-kids** __is a visual search engine for kids. You can choose between a visual search and a text search. the search comes up as interactive and animated thumbnails. The search turns up ONLY websites that are made for children.__


 * KidsClick**__ is my //**favorite**// of these three. It offers young explorers many choices of easy to search methods. Students may choose to search by:
 * 1) Keyword
 * 2) Category
 * 3) Alphabetical
 * 4) Dewey Decimal
 * 5) Media (Pictures, Sounds and Video)

Julia, thank you for sharing!!

Stephanie DeLeo

I spent quite a while looking at search engines that would be appropriate for my second graders. I also encountered some problems with webpages not being found. I really wanted to get on to the kids quintura site but could not access it for some reason. Here is a list of the sites that appealed to me.


 * I loved []. -This site is visually appealing, easy to use and has great resources. There is a search bar but I liked the alphabet search, as well.
 * [] -This is a great site for students looking for information about animals and the world around them. There are games, videos, and searches that are easily accessible. I loved how it was set up. There are “trending topics” and “tags”. This is a great way to start to teach young learners some of the Web 2.0 characteristics we’ve been learning about.
 * [] -This site claims to be a “safe search for kids by kids”.
 *  [] -Pics4Learning is a safe, free image library for education displaying copyright-friendly images.
 * []-Cybersleuth is a K-12 educational resource for students with pictures, videos, subjects, printables, games, clip art and more. Teachers can also access free lesson plans on this site.
 * Google Custom Search-I really enjoyed watching the video and learning about Google’s custom search abilities. I would feel much more comfortable creating a custom search engine for my students. This way, I can limit the information they receive so that what shows up is useful and appropriate.

In the early grades using the best search engine is especially important for safely but also to help find sites that will be more appealing to the early learner. I never knew there were so many options available. I was also impressed by visuals many of the sites used. Following is a list of search engines which I both liked and found met the criteria for an early learner. > http://aga-kids.com (great visual search option) Meg
 * [] (custom search engine, excellent safety features)
 * [|http://www.kidsclick.org]
 * [] (great site but recommended to be with an adult)

==== I am so excited to create my own custom search, and I feel so out of the loop in that I hadn't ever heard of doing that before! I have used Sweet Search-Biographies with my grade 3 students in the past to go along with the biography projects that they do with the classroom teachers. We have collaborated on learning PowerPoint as well. However, the online research portion has often produced material that is not best suited for grade 3 reading. I have provided links specifically for biography research on my wiki for this project, but can't wait to try creating my own custom search for this purpose. I have always felt that __Noodle Tools__-Noodlequest would be a great resource for older students, but haven't tried it with the grade 3-5 classes. I will focus in grade 5 some of the more advanced search techniques as we learned from the reading, as well as from Allen November last fall. ==== -Cassy

Michelle Joyce-

I never realized that there were so many search engines online, or that you could create your own! It was fun to explore sites that would be user friendly for my preschool students. Because most of my students aren't reading yet, I was mainly interested in safety and visual appeal. An adult would have to do the search with them, but a search engine with more color and visuals would keep them engaged in the process. My three favorites were:

KidRex: www.kidrex.org is a custom Google search engine for kids. I like the safety features and the visuals. The results from your search even have pictures to accompany the web address.



Aga-Kids: http://aga-kids.com is a visual search engine that lets you choose between a visual search and a text search.



Quintura Kids: http://quinturakids.com is very visually engaging and uses a keyword cloud to help kids refine their searches.



Nice Pics Michelle!!

Judy Ritts : Response to Search Engine Activity

I started my exploration of search engines by referring to our textbook on Page 40 with the Table 2.2: List of Search Engine sites. I started with Quintura Kids. I wasn’t impressed at all initially. I was using Gaudi architecture as my ‘search’ topic on the various sites ( I love Gaudi architecture & I thought it would be complex enough to see what information appeared on the screen that might be engaging for 6th and 7th grade students.) At first nothing came up: “No results for your Query” appeared on the screen. Then once I read more about Quintura Kids I realized the capability to ‘hover’ over a specific term in a ‘cloud’ took you to a list of sites – some more comprehensive than others. I will post Quintura Kids as a possible search engine site for my 6th & 7th grade moderate special needs students. It seems to be easy to use and offers options for exploring a topic through the splattering of key terms on the visual ‘cloud’.

Then I went to Blinkx, an Internet media platform that connects [|online video] viewers with publishers and distributors. It does use advertisements which is the downside to this site. I have found adds to border on being inappropriate for my sixth grade students, especially early in the fall of the year when most are still only eleven years old. Blinkx is a resource of over 35 million hours of video. I am finding videos are becoming more and more popular with middle school students – both making and viewing. I may explore Blinkx more as I move forward with integrating technology into my instruction.

Creative Commons is definitely a site I plan to explore. I will especially use Flickr – a photo sharing platform that is a popular Creative Commons site. Visuals and imaging assist with imagination with assists with understanding. A link to Flickr will be on my Wiki as a possible source for visual images for kids to safely access when creating presentations.

I was surprised to discover in this exploration of possible search engines to use with my students – that YouTube is now owned by Google! I realize now that I should have made that connection as Google so readily leads you to YouTube videos when you search topics. It was also interesting to note that YouTube [|added the CC BY licensing option] for video uploads One article states: //“Jane Park, June 2nd, 2011. You may have [|already heard] the great news—YouTube has added the [|Creative Commons Attribution license] (CC BY) as a licensing option for users! Now when users upload video, they can choose to license it under CC BY or to remain with the default “Standard YouTube License.” Users may also change the license on existing videos by editing each video individually.//

I will use the Pics4Learning search engine. I liked the way the images are displayed with the information students will need to document their research and give credit to the photographer and source. The information posted immediately below the image are the following : name of photograph, photographer, location, topic, date taken, and citation data. This site also provides the following clearly stated directives along with the image on how to save the image: Click the Download Image button and follow the download instructions in your browser. Click the Download Image button and follow the download instructions in your browser. Press and hold the image and choose Save image from the menu that appears. Press and hold the image and choose Save Image from the menu that appears.
 * Windows **
 * Macintosh **
 * Android **
 * iPad **

So, yes, I think Pics4Learning is an ideal site for use with my 6th grade students when they are in search of images with appropriate citing information to enrich their research projects.

The other sites that I explored were Ditto, Search Engine Land, Quintura, Exalead, and Teacher Tube. I will most likely use Teacher Tube, as I am a GREAT fan of YouTube, yet I didn’t have a lot of success when I briefly explored the Teacher Tube site. Now that Google is behind YouTube, and quality educationally focused videos for education are in high demand, I predict that TeacherTube will rise to meet the need for teachers.

In conclusion, I love You Tube, Flickr, Pics4Learning, and Google. I’m not sure about Bing, Quintura, Exalead as sites that I will visit. I like to avoid advertisements, and I like high quality visual images when I search for sites for my students. Judy Ritts



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