By
Dianette Coombs
First Pick Google
Google
was picked as the best general search engine because of its wealth of
information and access to every topic you can imagine. Google
can be set up to open in almost every language.
It provides parents and school systems options to filter information and
images (strict, moderate or no filtering). You can download Firefox to enhance
its usage.
Second Pick Yahoo
I
picked Yahoo as the second best general
search engine because of its user friendly presentation. The sidebar was comprehensive. The overall
organization of the homepage is clear and not clogged with advertisements. It
also has easy access to the website in a variety of languages.
First Pick Yahooligans!
Yahooligans is easy to use, colorful
and user friendly. Its reference section
is amazing! It includes links to major
encyclopedias, World Fact Book, World Almanac for Kids, The American Heritage
Spanish Dictionary online, a conversion calculator, and a very thorough section
on human biology (very appropriate for high school students). In addition, it has links to current events
and topics that interest children and teenagers. Finally, I was impressed with the resources
available to educate and help parents in the area of Internet safety. The teacher resources were great, too.
Second Pick Ask for Kids
Ask for Kids used to be known as Ask Jeeves for Kids. This search engine is kid friendly and its
links serves the needs of K-12 students.
The news resources for elementary school students include links to Scholastic New Zone, TIME for Kids and National GeographicKids.
Middle school and high school students
have links to sites such as CNN Student
News and Student Connections. Ask for Kids provides study help in a variety of
general subjects, clip art to use in school work. I was impressed with its dictionary
section. Students will be able to play
games that support spelling skills and guides them to write poetry.
Third Pick NABSS=National Association of British Schools in
Spain
I
have picked this site because of its well organize and user friendly display of
educational search engines. Their directory of world educational resources and educational
search engines is very comprehensive and safe for children and teenagers to
use.
First Pick Google News
Google News has over 4,000 resources of
news. It has lots of headlines and
images that make accessing news of interest easy to pick. The featured stories are linked to related
articles. The index includes full text
of news sources for east skimming and scanning.
Second Pick Yahoo News
If
you join Yahoo for free, you can customize
settings for news of interest. There is a feature that will alert you of news
that come up related to selected topics of interest. The “full coverage”
section has editor picks and links for the reader to provide feedback to the
news providers.
First Pick Dogpile
Dogpile has earned
my #1 vote. It is user friendly. You can
see at glance what main search engines have to offer. Dogpile compares the top results for leading search
engines with a single click. Its
“Comparison View” feature is quite useful.
Second Pick Clusty
Clusty provides free
search for non profit organizations and educational institutions. It organizes subject folders based upon the
searched theme. It tells you how many
links available for subtopics related to the main topic. Relatively easy to navigated and use.
First Pick Education-World
This
site provides a wealth of information – lesson plans, articles related to
school issues, professional development, technology integration and more. It is user friendly.
http://www.education-world.com/
Second Pick Education Index
This
educational site provides an index of great sites sorted by subject. In addition, is has an index of subjects
categorized by developmental life stages.
http://www.educationindex.com/
Third Pick Eduhound
I
could not narrow the picks in this category to just two. Eduhound.com
is a directory that highlights great sites for teachers and parents of students
in grades kindergarten to twelfth grade.
It is easy to use.