Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Thing 10: Search Tools Ninja

I have to admit that I am guilty of telling my students to "just go to Google" for many of their basic internet searching needs (we use databases for our research projects, I promise!). I teach elementary students, K-6, so I focused on learning about the search tools for younger students. However, I was interested on a personal level by the search tools that did not track your history. I could do without the almost psychic Facebook ads!

The first search engine that I looked at was KidRex. I enjoyed the cute interface (who doesn't love dinosaurs?) and that it was very straightforward. Enter your search terms, and hit the search button. I usually do an ecosystem project with 4th grade. While we use our databases for the majority of the research, I do allow them to search for "interesting" facts elsewhere. One issue that I see with KidRex is that the first 4-5 links are actually ads. So the top results for "tundra" are actually for a restaurant supply store and the Toyota Tundra- neither of which are very helpful to a kid looking for a fun fact! Obviously, this would be require some discussion ahead of time about really making sure the link matches what you need! I ran into this same issue with SweetSearch as well.

I liked the filtering capabilities of Choosito. Being able to choose a reading level would be great for our early researchers or our struggling readers! While I wish that it was free to have those options, I can definitely see the draw for paying for the subscription. This would be a great tool for differentiating. I also like the other options such as citation tools, student accounts, and the ability to track their research data to help fine tune their skills. The ads do still appear first on this one (at least the free version) as well. Clearly this is just a lesson that will have to be covered before internet searching!

I love PebbleGo and use it all the time! I find it great for all the grade levels, even if it is just a starting point for our students. I love that it has text, audio, and video options. The graphic organizers it provides are also great. I have had students do PebbleGo scavenger hunts to get them used to using the database, and we use it for almost all of our research projects. Most of the students head there first when looking for information on something.

Reading the article "6 Steps to Teaching Students to Search" by Alice Keeler brought to mind some of the issues I have when teaching students how to internet search. We do talk about keyword searching and checking the reliability of the website. However, one of her points is to not "search for the question". Thinking about it, that is exactly what my younger students do! They type the whole question "What animals live in the tundra" (for example) into Google. I also did not know about the ctrl-f shortcut, which allows students to jump to where the keyword is on the site. I practiced this with my Tundra search, using "adaptation" as my keyword. Sure enough, it highlighted the word adaptation, making it easy to find!

 Another issue I face is students using whatever pops up in the "box" after a Google search for their final answers. I like that some of these other search engines do not have that option, forcing them to actually click on the links and read (oh the horror!!). I plan on testing some of these out with our upcoming biography research project in April!


1 comment:

  1. Great test of a variety of tools. Will be interested to hear how it goes with your student biography project.

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