Search Tools: Free to Educators
Each tool follows different procedures, such as keywords or semantic descriptions, for searching...
Links
http://www.google.com/preferences
every computer used by your students
Each tool follows different procedures, such as keywords or semantic descriptions, for searching. After a bit of practice the particular conventions are easy to remember.
Google is a search site that appeals to the power searcher -- fast and clean. It ranks web pages and sites based on which are the most popular (i.e., which have the most incoming links). The problem with Google is that as its index of sites expands, many interesting sites are hard to find.
In addition to indexing the Web, Google has archived and indexed every post on the Usenet discussion groups dating back to 1981. No matter what the topic or issue, someone has talked about it in a newsgroup.
You can use Google's SafeSearch Filter to eliminate "adult" content from both the Web and Groups searches. It can be set using Google Preferences page.
Google is really a collection of search tools: images; academic publications; contents of books; and maps.
Dogpile combines the results of multiple search engines into a single page. Useful when trying to find obscure references.
Vivisimo shows links in a concept cluster, pre-sorted into convenient sub-categories. Works well when the same term has multiple uses (like "Apache"). See also KartOO for searches by concepts.
Lycos is another popular search engine similar to Google.
We're sorry to say that Yahoo, one of the web's original search sites, can no longer be recommended. Yahoo's current policy is to only add sites that pay for their listings. This eliminates the smaller non-profit and individual web sites that give the Internet its breadth and depth.
For younger kids try KidsClick! or Google Kids & Teens.
Annotation
Currently most search services contain public domain references. Students still need to know that the standard procedures for citing references in projects apply to electronic publications just as they do for the print media. Notice of copyrighted information is usually provided.
Most search services do not exert quality control. Educational search providers will screen for inappropriate contents but the methods are not foolproof.
