Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Search Engines, Research


Find the Best

Find the Best is a new (beta) comparison search engine that works similar to Hitsplitter. This is a nice way to find and compare data on a number of subjects. It has a nice education area to test out comparative data.

I highly recommend checking out Find the Best by clicking here.


Surf Canyon Real-time Personalized Search

Surf Canyon is an interesting search engine service designed to help you alter and refine your search results. Here's how it works, when you search on Surf Canyon a small "target" icon is placed next to each link in your search results. Clicking the target re-sorts the results based on relevance to the link you select. Surf Canyon draws results from Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Surf Canyon also has an element of Google Instant that alters your search results each time you touch a key on your keyboard.

If you don't want to go to Surf Canyon to search you can use their browser add-on. Surf Canyon's browser add-on works for Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer.

Here's a short video about Surf Canyon.
Popout

Applications for Education
Surf Canyon could be useful for students who need a little help in refining their searches to find the information that is most relevant to their online research.


Encyclomedia - Video Encyclopedia

Encyclomedia is a free video encyclopedia. OnEncyclomedia you can browse for videos and articles by category or search for a specific topic. What I like about Encyclomedia is that visitors can read an article then go watch a video that matches that article. It's very similar to the now-offline Nibipedia and VisWiki sites.

Thanks to Ann Oro for sharing Encyclomedia on Twitter this morning.

Applications for Education
When I searched on Encyclomedia this morning I didn't always find what I was looking for (Revolutionary War only yielded a couple of results), but for some content areas it could be very helpful. Encyclomedia could be helpful for struggling readers to get some visual and audio content to support them in their quest to understand a particular topic.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Let's Get Video on Wikipedia
Encyclopedia of Life - Species Quiz on Google Earth


Sweet Search 2Day - Best of the Web for Students

Dulcinea Media, host of the academic search engine Sweet Search, has a new free offering for teachers and students called Sweet Search 2 Day. Sweet Search 2 Day is a one page stop for good, up to date, web content that can be used in Science, History, and Language Arts classes. Visitors to Sweet Search 2 Day will find some entertaining content, cartoons and image galleries, that is safe for classroom environments. Sweet Search 2 Day also hosts some useful reference materials, like "how to write a bibliography," for students and parents.

Thanks to Kyle Pace for the Tweet that drew my attention toSweet Search 2 Day.

Applications for Education
If you're in need of some quick, relevant talking points or conversation starters for your classes, Sweet Search 2 Daymight be a good resource for you to bookmark. Looking for some academic brainteasers? Sweet Search 2 Day has you covered there too.


“Embracing Wikipedia”

Many teachers question Wikipedia’s accuracy and usefulness as a student research tool. Embracing Wikipediais an article from Education Week that questions that critique:
Like any encyclopedia, the online resource Wikipedia is not a perfect reference guide; however, it is an excellent place for students to start the research process and has immense pedagogical value for teachers.
It’s a short piece worth reading. I agree with the writer, and have no objections to my mainstream and IB students using it as one of their sources (my ESL students can use theSimple English Wikipedia).
What do you think?
(Thanks to Langwitches for the tip)


Wikipedia Explained by Common Craft

Lee and Sachi Lefever have once again created a great video that educators should watch. Wikipedia Explained by Common Craft uses Common Craft's In Plain English style to explain how Wikipedia works. The video explains how Wikipedia entries are written, updated, verified, and maintained. Watch the video on Common Craft.












Applications for Education
Wikipedia, somewhat unfairly, too often gets bad-mouthed by educators that don't understand how the content on it is updated and edited by a community of users. Because of that lack of understanding some educators don't allow students to access Wikipedia at all and are therefore depriving students of a general reference. I'm not advocating for students to cite Wikipedia in research papers, but I do think that it can be a good place for students to start digging for information.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Textbooks, Wikipedia, and Primary Source Research
Mashpedia - The Real-time Encyclopedia
VisWiki - Visual Wikipedia




Goofram - Google and Wolfram Alpha Side by Side

Goofram is a mash-up of Google Search and Wolfram Alpha search. Enter your search term(s) into Goofram and it will display relevant results drawn from Google and Wolfram Alpha.

Goofram really shines when you're searching for information about a topic that could potentially have a lot of numerical information as well as text-based information. For example, when I searched using the phrase, "first person to climb Mount Everest," the result was a column of links, generated by Google, to articles about Mount Everest and a column of statistical information, generated by Wolfram Alpha, about Mount Everest.

(click the image below to see my Goofram results page).

Applications for Education
Goofram could be a good resource for science and mathematics students conducting online research. By having statistical information displayed side-by-side with text-based information students will save time as they are essentially getting a two-for-one withGoofram.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Beyond Google - Improve Your Search Results
Mashpedia - The Real-time Encyclopedia
Wolfram Alpha for Educators - Free Lesson Plans


Sweet Search - A Search Engine for Students

Sweet Search is a search engine that searches only the sites that have been reviewed and approved by a team of librarians, teachers, and research experts. In all there are 35,000 websites that have been reviewed and approved by Sweet Search. In addition to the general search engine, Sweet Search offers five niche search engines. The niche search engines are for Social Studies, Biographies, SweetSites (organized by grade and subject area), School Librarians, and Sweet Search 4 Me (for elementary school students).

Sweet Search can be used by visiting the site directly or you can embed Sweet Search widgets into your blog or website.

Applications for EducationIf you're concerned about your students stumbling onto sites that aren't reliable, try having them use Sweet Search. You could accomplish the same thing by creating a Google Custom Search Engine, but Sweet Searchhas already done essentially the same thing for you. Put one of the Sweet Search widgets into your classroom blog or school website so that students can search reliable sites within a familiar context. 

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
How Web Search Works
Lesson Plans for Teaching Web Search Strategies
How to Create a Custom Search Engine








Top 10 Search Engines


A search engine is a website to designed to search for information on the web and then display a wide range of results. Google has always been my favorite one but recently there have been an abundance of other sites that I've found to be very useful for educators. Below is my list of top 10 search engines other than Google.

Top 10 Search Engines
  1. Eyeplorer - A unique and excellent search engine designed around a wheel format that lets a user take notes via an online widget.
  2. Oamos - A wonderful visual experience that is unlike anything else around.
  3. Quintura - A fun "tag cloud" style site that lets users embed word chains into a site.
  4. BevyFind - A search engine that speeds up the searching process by combing different elements into one page.
  5. Kngine - An excellent "web 3.0" search engine built on semantics.
  6. Spezify - Get visual results w/ a sticky type interface that incorporates all sorts of media content.
  7. Scoopler - One of the best real-time search engines on the way w/ a built in button to share results across multiple social networks.
  8. Webkruz - Get search results in visual thumbnails w/ blurbs of text underneath.
  9. Sputtik - A great way to search for results on the web w/ a variety of content covered in different visual ways.
  10. Feedmil - A nice way to search where users can adjust their results via a sliding panel that controls the searching criteria.


Search Credible



Search Credible is a excellent search engine that is a combination of 26 of the best ones around (ie, Google, WolframAlpha, Ebsco, etc). This is an ideal site to use when wanting to use one of these valuable resources in one location.

I highly recommend giving Search Credible a try by clicking here.


Developing Critical Thinking Through Web Research




As we know, the Internet is a great place to find information on anything that sparks your curiosity. Likewise, the web is a great resource for students, but they need to know how to evaluate what they find and discern the good from the bad. That's where we come in as teachers. And to help us help our students, Microsoft offers us a free 37 page ebook titled Developing Critical Thinking Through Web Research Skills. The ebook presents strategies for teaching Internet search skills and strategies for evaluating information. The ebook also links to many additional resources for teaching web search strategies. There are strategies and resources appropriate for students from in early elementary grades through high school included in the ebook. As you might expect, the ebook is heavy on references to Bing and other Microsoft products, but overall it is a good resource worth your time to download and read.

H/T to Steven Anderson for sharing this resource on Twitter.


Zoodles - A Free Kid-Friendly Web Browser
from Free Technology for Teachers by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne)

http://www.zoodles.com/
Zoodles is a web browser designed for use by children eight years old and younger. Zoodles provides a safe environment of screened and preselected web-based activities for education and entertainment. When you register to download Zoodles you're given the option to enter your child's age. Zoodles uses that information to provide your child with age appropriate activities. You can also specify if your child has a vision or hearing impairment and Zoodles will use that information to provide your child with appropriate activities accessible to him or her. Installing and using Zoodles is 100% free. Zoodles also offers some premium add-ons such as activity reports and custom settings for a fee.
 
How to Create a Custom Search Engine
from Free Technology for Teachers by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne)
http://www.google.com/cse/
If you work in a school that uses strict web filtering you and your students know the frustration of conducting a search only to have many of the links in your results blocked. One way to avoid this frustration is to build your own search engine using Google Custom Search. Google Custom Search allows you to specify which sites you want searched. You can specify websites that you know aren't blocked by your school's filter and sites that you judge to be reliable sources of information. The presentation below will walk you through creating a custom search engine and how you can install it in a Blogger blog.
 
Hunch
from Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero by dkapuler
http://hunch.com/
Hunch is an interesting new search engine that gets "smarter" the more it is used. The way it works is a person asks a question on Hunch and it gives out some suggestions/results. The more a person asks it the more refined an answer gets as the database "learns".
 
Cuil from Kathy Schrock
http://www.cuil.com/
...a powerful search engine that does not take link popularity into consideration as much as others; searches based on context of text and provides a clean, uncluttered, but very useful, results page

Google Search changes:
http://www.youtube.com/v/C-rnxNFRAQA&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&border=1

http://geolover.com/
Geolover
from Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... by Larry Ferlazzo
Geolover can help you decide where to go. Mark places that you like and create your own personal travel guide and map

Blinkx Video Search
http://www.blinkx.com/
from Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... by Larry Ferlazzo
the world’s largest and most advanced video search engine


Find Icons
from Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero by dkapuler
Find Icons is a search engine designed to look for icons. This is one of my favorite new sites just for the fact how easy it is to get clip art. I'm not sure what kind of filtering is going on but this site looks to have a lot of promise.
http://findicons.com/
Animated Web Search Tutorials
from Free Technology for Teachers by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne)
Vaughn Memorial Library at Acadia University hosts four free animated tutorials designed to teach lessons on web research strategies. The four tutorials are Credible Sources Count, Research It Right, Searching With Success, and You Quote It, You Note It.

http://library.acadiau.ca/tutorials/webevaluation/ In Credible Sources Count students learn how to recognize the validity of information on the Internet. It's a good tutorial except for a strong emphasis on using domain names for determining validity.
http://library.acadiau.ca/tutorials/research/  Research It Right walks students through the process of forming a research question through the actual research steps.

http://library.acadiau.ca/tutorials/websearching/  Searching With Success shows students how search engines function. The tutorial gives clear examples and directions for altering search terms.

http://library.acadiau.ca/tutorials/plagiarism/  You Quote It, You Note It shows students what plagiarism is and how to avoid accidentally plagiarizing someone's work


BevyFind
from Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero by dkapuler
http://www.bevyfind.com/default.aspx

is a search engine I just found out about from Larry Ferlazzo's excellent blog. This is a rather unique search engine as it tries to speed up the whole searching process by embedding different searching criteria into one window.


VisWiki - Visual Wikipedia
from Free Technology for Teachers by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne)
http://www.viswiki.com/en/
VisWiki has a great concept and layout that could meet the needs of a variety of learning styles. Visual Wikipedia shows students connections between topics through web diagrams and videos. VisWiki takes Wikipedia entries and then shows a web of related topics. In addition to the web of connections there is a video (often many videos) connected to each topic. Each item on the connections web is linked to more information about that particular topic. Clicking on each link in the connections web also generates a new web about the link clicked. Below you will see the connections web for Economy of the United States.


Sleedo   http://www.sleedo.com/
from Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero by dkapuler
Sleedo is a search engine found out about from the wonderful blog, iLearn Technology. This is a engine designed to help feed the world by donating 10 grains of rice for every search.



Google Search Stories
from Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero by dkapuler

http://www.youtube.com/searchstories
Google Search Stories is a site I just read about on Kelley Tenkley's award winning blog, iLearn Technology. This is an excellent site for digital storytelling. All a user has to do is choose a video based on your search terms, add some music, then click create.


http://www.youtube.com/searchstories
Through YouTube's Search Stories Video Creator you can build your own short story of featuring your chosen search terms. To create your Search Story just enter seven search terms, choose a search tool for each term (map, web, image, etc.), choose music, and click create

Duck Duck Go - A Simplified Search Engine
from Free Technology for Teachers by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne)
http://duckduckgo.com/
Duck Duck Go is a search engine designed with clarity and simplicity in mind. One of the ways that clarity and simplicity stands out is when you enter a search term that can have multiple meanings, Duck Duck Go alerts you to that and asks you what you really want to search for. For example, if you enter the search term "duck," Duck Duck Go will tell you that "duck" could be a noun or a verb. (see the screen capture below) Duck Duck Go also provides brief information summaries when you search for topics. This is handy if you're not really looking for a lot of information about a topic, but are just in need of a quick synopsis of a topic.



http://www.bevyfind.com/default.aspx
BevyFind is a new search engine that lets you…well, it’s a little hard for me to explain exactly what it does. For English Language Learners, I like the fact that you can click on a text result and see the website without leaving the search page. I also like the fact that you can easily add multiple search results, including images, to automatically add to email that you can describe. That capability is good for higher-order thinking categorization skills.
from Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... by Larry Ferlazzo

Sweet Search  http://www.sweetsearch.com/
from Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero by dkapuler

Sweet Search is a nice search engine for students, everything has been approved and moderated for their safety.



http://librophile.com/
Librophile from Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero by dkapuler
search engine to find free audio books

http://www.tineye.com/ (From Technology Tidbits:  Thoughts of a Cyber Hero)
TinEye is a new (beta) reverse search engine. What that means is a person uploads an image and then finds out various information such as, how it's being used, where it came from, etc.

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