Search+Engines

Search Engines //Infotopia//. n.p., n.d. Web. 23 April, 2011. This is "an academic search engine accessing only trusted websites previously selected by librarians, teachers, and educational consortia." Beyond a search engine, there are also links to high-quality educational sites. I think this would be a great site to share with students to use with inquiry and I found this tool through LM_NET. Although I think this is a useful site for students, the results are a little meager.

//Qwiki//. Qwiki, 2011. Web. 23 April, 2011. This is a site that creates a "movie" about a topic entered in the search box. A series of photographs, pictures, and statistical graphs are shown with a voice-over repeating the information typed at the bottom of the screen. This is a pretty interesting concept, and I would definitely share this resource with students, although it might work better with younger students. I also found this site through LM_NET and while I like the novel concept of this site, I don't know how helpful it would be for research.

//Shmoop//. Schmoop University, Inc., 2011. Web. 23 April, 2011. This is a pretty new site and the subject of much discussion on LM_NET. I think it looks pretty interesting and has a variety of learning guides, test prep help, and resources for teachers. I would show this site to students as a research resource to use as a starting point for inquiry. I found this site through LM_NET and it's a well-designed site that is well-written and fun to read. On the flip side, not all the content is free and there are no citations in the articles, so they couldn't really be used for research.

//SweetSearch//. Dulcinea Media, 2010. Web. 23 April, 2011. This is a great search engine that links to academic resources and I've used it with students this year. They seem to like it and they've found great resources by using it. I also heard of this site from LM_NET. I love this tool because it retrieves more trustworthy results than Google, but the downside is that I'm sure there are many great results that are not retrieved because they have not been approved by the staff.