Search Engines for Teachers and Students
Student-Friendly Search Resources

Research Subject Directories
I may be wrong, but these resources seem safer than any general search engine could be.  Still, I'll use Google with strict filtering when all else fails.
  • Fact Monster has a very easy-to-use, safe set of resources, including an atlas, almanac, encyclopedia, dictionary.  In addition, the homepage has links to news, people, games, sports, math, and homework pages, all of which are searchable. http://www.factmonster.com/
  • Yahooligans! has a great set of resources as well, including subject directories on science that have links to animal photos and sounds.  Although Yahooligans! focuses more on pop culture than on school-based learning, the news link has some interesting slide shows on a variety of topics. http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/
Images and Clipart
Having kids look for pictures on the internet is a scary proposition, but sometimes presentations really need an image that can't be found elsewhere. 
  • Google can be used for finding all sorts of images.  It can be made very kid-friendly by choosing strict filtering in Preferences. http://www.google.com/
In testing the safety of the search engines that offered images, I used the strict filtering preferences of each site and looked for images of a popular female sports figure, Michelle Kwan, since I recently had a student ask me for information on her.

Not Recommended:  msn.com and Yahoo! listed images from adult links even after adult filtering was selected.  Although the photos themselves were not objectionable, students who click on the photo could be sent to the adult content site where the photo originates.


Resources for Teacher Research and Lesson Planning
Search Engines
We're busy, so we really don't have time to use more than a couple resources to find the perfect site for planning a lesson or teaching a concept.  While this assignment helped me better understand that I might miss a key site if I don't branch out from Google, I also thought often about the cost in time that I must pay to search in depth.
  • Google, not surprisingly, gave me the best results by far when I tested sites for hits on teacher topics such as graphic novels and measuring angles.  Consistently, I rated Google's first 10 hits to be twice as useful as that of any other search engine.  Overall, an average of 5.5 of the first 10 Google hits were useful, while the next best result was. . .
  • Yahoo!Search, which averaged 2.75 useful hits out of the first 10 listed.  http://search.yahoo.com/

Metasearch Engines
These tools have lost their endorsement from the UC Berkeley Library, due to their inability to compare with Google.  I found that almost every single useful site listed by the meta-search engines came from Google, yet the metasearch engines missed a few good hits that Google gave me.  Still, I had pretty good luck with these two:
  • Dogpile was fairly thorough reporting useful hits from Google, and in one instance gave me a great interactive site on angle measurement not listed by Google. http://www.dogpile.com/
  • Clusty, a beta search product from Vivisimo, produced the same hits as Dogpile, with a couple of exceptions.  In one case, a Clusty hit produced an excellent article found on Gigablast that no other search engine found. http://clusty.com/

Subject Indexes
I found nothing new of value by searching these resources.  However, the directories provided by Yahoo! and Google offer lots of interesting tidbits if you have the time to browse.