Tutorial for teachers- Using image search engines and sites to find images and clip art

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How to search for reliable information at search engines?

Usually you enter a keyword or phrase at 'Google' or other search engines box and within seconds there are million of results. If you are looking for information for educational, scholar, research or relevant purpose then this is very easy tip which you can use and get results from only Government or Educational sites/blogs which are usually non profit and offer reliable information.

Process is very simple.

For example you need some information on 'home schooling'. You just enter .EDU or .GOV before your keyword and just add site or blog after it. It should look like:

.EDU+home schooling+blogs or 'sites'
.Gov+home schooling+site or 'blogs'

You would be surprised to see filtered results from reputable and reliable sites. Your results should not bring sites with affiliate links or fake sale pages.

Use kids search engines to find child safe sites

Either you are a teacher, parent or student and scouring the internet for any kind of information, better to start searching at 'Kids Search Engines' which provide child safe and family friendly links. Kids or students are also advised to use these safe search engines for search purposes.

• Smart Zone:  These Web sites have been specifically selected for educational use by EdView.  
• 'KidsClick' :  Excellent site created by librarians with a search engine of appropriate educational sites for students.
• K-12 INFOMINE Search Screen:  This is a searchable collection of instructional web sites
• Berit's Best Sites for Children: Search page:  Seach Berit's Best Sites.
  
• Education Planet - The Education Web Guide:  This is a searchable collection of educational web sites.
  
 
• Education World:  Large web site of educational links and a search engine feature to search these links.

• SuperKids SuperSearch:  This is a collection of educational web sites with a search feature as well as categories.
• K-12 World! SecureSearch™ :  A SecureSearch is safer for students and other users because it does not search the entire Internet, only those sites that have been approved for educational use.
  
• Schoolwork.org:  This is a searchable site of educational web sites.
  
• Awesome Library - Education Search Engine:  Database of 110,000+ sites related to educational topics.
  
• Awesome Library - K-12 Education Directory for Kids:  Search engine with a kids category. (limited results)
  
• Blue Web'n Refined Search :  Search engine of good educational sites, with ratings and grade levels. However, this is a fairly small database, so use one or two keywords only.
  
• StudyWeb:  Doesn't give descriptions with first search results and some terms were hard to guess at the relevance. But the next level gives good descriptions of sites with ratings and approximate grade level provided.
  
• ThinkQuest:  This is a collection of educational sites created by middle and high school students for the ThinkQuest Contest.
  
• LookSmart: Exploring World - Reference & Education k-12 - For Teachers - curriculum content:  This is a search engine that searches educational curriculum content information gathered by educational sites.
  
• LookSmart: Exploring World - Reference & Education k-12 - For Teachers - Lesson Plans:  This is a search engine that searches lesson plans gathered by a number of educational sites.
• The WWW Virtual Library:  Searchable collection - may not be just geared to kids
  

Source: 'Educational Search Engines'

Useful links:
* 'Kids search engines and directories

* 'Ivy's Kids Search Engine Resources

* 'Child-Safe Search Engines and Educational Directories'

* A List of Education Search Engines

Use 'clusty' for better search results

In my previous posts I have reviewed and discussed about many child safe and family friendly search engines. Narrowing your search with the help of these specific search engines ensures fast and specific response to your keywords. We prefer to save our time and get only the best links within few facing pages for the relevant information. 'Clusty' is a new search engine babased on the idea of presenting group results into topics or clusters for better search.

'Clusty' queries several top search engines, combines the results, and generates an ordered list based on comparative ranking. This "metasearch" approach helps raise the best results to the top and push search engine spam to the bottom.

How it works?

Instead of delivering millions of search results in one long list, our search engine groups similar results together into clusters. Clusters help you see your search results by topic so you can zero in on exactly what you’re looking for or discover unexpected relationships between items. Rather than scrolling through page after page, the clusters help you find results you may have missed or that were buried deep in the ranked list.

You get the best results from your online search because 'Clusty' retrieves results from Ask, Open Directory, Gigablast and others. To see which search engines returned results for your query, click on the “Details” link at the top of the search results list.

A search engine for kids from librarians - 'Kids click'

'Google' is the most popular and being widely used for online searches and there is no doubt that you can find valuable information about any topic at this popular search engine. Still I suggest that parents, teachers and students should use family friendly or safe to use search engines for any kind of educational or related search. 'kids click' is another safe search engine for kids/students which is made by librarians and you can expect quality content from this search engines.

More about 'Kids click':

Kids click.org is a web search directory specifically made for kids by librarians. It is a search engine where kids can browse for any kind of online material and resources such as encyclopedias, dictionaries and all kinds of related educational resources for kids.

How to search at the search engine?

You can find other categories in case you want to browse for content by subject such as facts and reference, science and math, the arts, weird and mysterious, health and family, popular entertainments, religion and mythology, home and household, sports and recreation, society and government, machines and transportation, literature, reading, writing and speaking, computers, the internet, geography, history and biography. You can also search subjects by initial letters as well as do advanced searches for specific stuff

It is owned and run by the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) at San Jose State University. as a logical step in addressing concerns about the role of public libraries in guiding their young users to valuable and age appropriate web sites. It is intended to guide users to good sites; not block them from "bad" sites.

Site link: Kidsclick.org
Related posts:

* Famous Search Engines for Kids

* Search safely with 'Family Friendly Sites'

* "All Safe Sites" - A search engine for young children

* Where to search for educational stuff?

"All Safe Sites" - A search engine for young children

As internet use is increasing worldwide, more sites and links are emerging to help our kids browse safely online. I have written few posts about few top search engines where parents, teachers or students can search safely for the specific stuff.
is a directory and search engine for yound children. It is designed with visual aid to make it easy for small chilren who find text based sites difficult to read.

Other specialities of 'All safe sites'

- It is free of ads, and the reason (according to them) behind keeping it ad free is that most advertisement programs are deceptive in nature and attempt to lure the user away to another web site that is often not suitable for children.
- It offers educational, fun and safe sites.
- Directory of the search engine is human edited. Each site in their directory is personally reviewed and recommended by an elementary school teacher.

Home page offers search for catagories: Educational, technology, fun & games, entertainment, random and top rated sites.
Site link: All safe sites

Related posts:

* Search at "Ask for KIDS" for educational stuff!

* Search for the kids sites at "Kinder Start"

* Study Sphere-providing learning resources

* A "Child and Family Web Guide" about child development sites

* Where to search for educational stuff?

* Famous Search Engines for Kids

Famous Search Engines for Kids

When we search for educational or edutainment sites from ordinary search engines like Yahoo, Google, MSN, there is chance to not get the specific information. Because there are millions of professional sites selling products and naturally it takes time and effort to search for the valuable stuff. This post would help parents, teachers and kids to search at specific search engines which provide safe and useful infromation for them. These search engines are user friendly enabling filters to bring out only reliable and safe sites to the family members.

Famous Search Engines for Kids

* Kindernet - Kindernet insures that the safest and most useful results are found for you and your children using the smart searching filters. Kindernet also allows for faster searching by making the keyword entry process easy. If you want to search for two words, just type in “and” between your two key terms. If you wish to exclude a word, just add a minus sign in front of it.

* Quintura - Quintura Kids is one of the most useful search engines for kids. Quintura Kids caters its famous “cloud search” specifically to the children, allowing them to search through various subjects with ease. It provides the users with categories or “tags” for their keywords. This allows kids to get very specific with their search and get accurate results just like the big-boys who use quotation marks, addition signs, and secret symbols in Google.

* GoGooligans - This is basically Google for kids. It has safety filters which prevent vulgar material from leaking out from the unsanitary cables and pipes known as the internet. GoGooligans also offers many search options, allowing kids to search through specific websites such as PBS, Britannica, Merriam Webster, About, etc. Also, once the search term is entered, users can then choose more specific results for their keywords, such as, Geography, History, Facts, Definition, and much more.

* Ask Kids - This search engine is a easy to navigate and offers features which make searching less of an ordeal. Enter your keyword and you are presented with numerous different facts along with your search result. This allows the children to not get lost in the all the links, and it helps them to get their information quickly.

* Famhoo - it provides a clean and simple layout that is usable by even the youngest internet users. Famhoo is a family search engine with top notch filters.

Parents and teachers are suggested to bookmark these links and let their children start browsing from these search engines.

Related posts:

* Where To Search For Educational Stuff?

* Search at "Ask for KIDS" for educational stuff!

* Search for kids sites at Kinder Art

Where To Search For Educational Stuff?

A good search engine lets you filter any content that may be offensive and inappropriate. This is a new feature that seems to be catching on and is proving to be effective. It can help you find high quality sites, relevant to what you are searching for.

Often we start browsing by entering any keyword at the provided box of a 'search engine'. Result is related to the words or terms we seek from the world wide web, but most of the site links don't provide reliable and FREE stuff. In case of educational or teachers stuff, it is my experience that I had to spend hours in search of the information I needed. Initial purpose of this personal blog was to place the information and links at one place for an easy access, but gradually I realized that there are lot of parents or teachers who are in the same situation and can't find the information easily from the world wide web. This post would help you search at the specific search engines offering the links and free resources for teachers, students and parents.

These are the posts which provide a full review of the search engines for educational stuff. At the bottom of the post there are links to other search engines or sites where you can search for the educational information.

* "Free search engine tutorial" - a short and easy guide to Web searching, search engines and directories. This little crash course will teach you how to explore the Net more efficiently.
A short and easy search engine tutorial By Pandia Search Engine

* "Ask Jeeves for Kids" is an educational based search engine. 'Ask for Kids' allows kids to ask questions and perform web searches, such as "When did Hawaii become a state?" etc.

Read more: Search at "Ask for KIDS" for educational stuff!

* "Kinder Search" is a directory plus search engine, which is focused on children 0-7 years on the net. It is the largest and most popular indexed directory and search engine for kids.

Read the review: Search for the kids sites at "Kinder Start"

* "Study Sphere.com" is a search engine based learning portal for students, families and teachers. It provides fast, easy and free access to a wide variety of research-quality child-safe websites organized for education online from home, school, study abroad and home school.

Read the review: "Study Sphere"- providing learning resources!

* "Child and family web guide" is a directory of the sites rated by experts from "Tufts University" which is one of the premimier universities in the United States. The goal of the WebGuide is to give the public easy access to the best child development information on the Web.

Read more: A "Child and Family Web Guide" about child development sites

* Teacher Tap is a free, professional development resource that helps educators and librarians address common questions about the use of technology in teaching and learning.

- Search Tools for Kids, Teens, and Teachers

* A list of education search engines from "Search Engine Guide"

* Kids.net.au Search engine with the option to search for web sites, encyclopedia, dictionary or thesaurus.

* How to find and use the Invisible Web and Meta Search Engines at the Educational CyberPlayGround.
- Edu-cyber PG.com

* How to choose a seach engine or directory?

A "Child and Family Web Guide" about child development sites

There are many search engines, site which help teachers, parents or students in search for learning or learning related web sites. Because searching at a search engines can take hours to search for the specific information.

"Child and family web guide" is a directory of the sites rated by experts from "Tufts University" which is one of the premimier universities in the United States. It is non-profit resource, based on parent and professional feedback.

Child and family web guide evaluates, describes and provides links to hundreds of sites containing child development research and practical advice.

The goal of the WebGuide is to give the public easy access to the best child development information on the Web.

Who is the WebGuide for?
The WebGuide is an online rating and review guide for a broad range of audiences, from those familiar with the topic of child development who are seeking answers to relatively sophisticated questions, to those with minimal background who are seeking a basic understanding of a topic. Audiences that the WebGuide is intended to serve include:

* Parents of children from infancy to adolescence
* Professionals who work with children, such as teachers, pediatricians, counselors, day care providers and others
* Professionals whose work concerns children, such as government officials, social policy experts and journalists
* Students studying child development -- at the high school, undergraduate and graduate level

What you can get from the WebGuide?

There are five main categories of information:
- family/parenting,
- education/learning,
- typical child development,
- health/mental health, and
- resources/recreation.

The first four categories contain sites with research-based information. The fifth category, resources/recreation, contains sites with information about specific programs and things to do. The resources/recreation sites, which were added at the request of parents, do not contain research-based information.
The WebGuide also offers an option of searching for sites that are especially relevant to a particular age group :
topics by age offers several features requested by parents (e.g., ask an expert sites; research news sites).

- Medical pages provides links to child related medical sites.
WebGuide provides search engine boxes for searches.

"Study Sphere"- providing learning resources!

I have been writing posts about resources and links which might be helpful in learning for students, teachers and parents. Mostly I review the sites or educational portals, where I find that source really valuable or free to access. And usually I include the important page links at each of my post to search fast.
Today's site is Study Sphere.com which is a search engine based learning portal for students, families and teachers.


Mission and goal: "StudySphere provides fast, easy and free access to a wide variety of research-quality child-safe websites organized for education online from home, school, study abroad and home school. StudySphere’s goal is to help students, teachers, librarians, and other researchers find both highly targeted and closely related information quickly."
StudySphere categorizes over 100,000 research-quality child-safe websites.

It is very easy to search for your favourite topic sites, as home page provides topic catagory, where you would get number of site links. For example I searched for
teachers resources and at the Teaching resources page there were a lot of site links divided into further catagories.

Site link:
Study Sphere.com

Search for the kids sites at "Kinder Start"

Searching for kids sites at the net could be a time consuming task. Because if you search at usual broad search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN, you would get thousands or millions of results, but as that search is not focused and it might take hours to search for the useful resources, better to search sites at specific topic search engines.

I have written posts about some search engines which provide the site links safe for children. Today I am here with a review of a directory plus search engine, which is focused on children 0-7 years on the net.
As far as I searched the site, there are lot of useful links and informative sites. It is the largest and most popular indexed directory and search engine for kids.
Site was created in May, 2000 with funding from a group of private investors.
Mission (In their own words): To provide parents, grandparents, foster parents and teachers with the most organized, and easiest to use index and search engine available.


Their motto or trade mark is: "Because Kids don’t come with instructions"

KinderStart.com has added resources for teachers of young children and even young users.

How to use the site: When you click on the home page link, you would be provided with topics, and each topic takes you to another page with a lot of site links. KinderStart has given some description of the site, so you can search for your favourite sites easily.

Sign up to receive their newsletter: link

Search at "Ask for KIDS" for educational stuff!

"Ask for Kids" (formerly known as Ask Jeeves for Kids) is an educational based search engine.

* Ask for Kids allows kids to ask questions and perform web searches, such as "When did Hawaii become a state?" or "What's it like to live in space?"or even "Convert 122 inches into feet" in the same way they would ask a parent, friend or teacher.

* The home page provide you with a picture of a pile of books with the names: Dictionary, Thesaurus,Almanac,Biography,Science,Clip art,Astronomy,World Atlas,Math help and history. So easily you can search for your subject.

* You can click on the link "Fun & Games", if you have finished searching and now want to relax, and play some online free games.

Why "Ask for Kids" was created?
In their own words:

"Kids have great imaginations and are curious by nature. That's why Ask for Kids has created a fast, easy, and safe way for kids to find information and answers online. Ask for Kids is primarily an educational Web site that kids can use for homework help and research for school projects.

Each Web site included in Ask for Kids is carefully selected by an editor. We include only "G-rated" pages and those written specifically for children. We select sites for the quality and depth of their content, and for safety. This criteria extends to the content of the pages presented on the Ask for Kids search results page, as well as the content of pages directly linked to on those results.

Ask for Kids focuses on modernizing its search engine technology, and giving kids tools that would make their searches experience better and more satisfying."