HMTCA Reach Lesson Plans & Tips


Click on the links under All Pages on the left of this page to go to specific lessons that deal with research on the computer. Click on the links or pictures below to go to better search engines for students.


Screen shot 2010-07-03 at 10_57_23 AM.png

Sweet Search is a search engine that searches only the sites that have been reviewed and approved by a team of librarians, teachers, and research experts. In all there are 35,000 websites that have been reviewed and approved by Sweet Search. In addition to the general search engine, Sweet Search offers five niche search engines. The niche search engines are for Social Studies, Biographies, SweetSites (organized by grade and subject area), School Librarians, and Sweet Search 4 Me (for elementary school students). Source http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/11/ten-search-tools-and-tactics-teachers.html


external image Screen+shot+2010-08-02+at+12.22.12+PM.pngWolfram Alpha is billed as a computational search engine and this is exactly what it does. If students have any questions involving numbers, Wolfram Alpha is the place to go. Wolfram Alpha can be used for many other search functions too, just remember that it's not an index of the web like Google or Bing, it's an index of information. Here's a recent postin which I outlined some of the many things Wolfram Alpha offers. Source http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/11/ten-search-tools-and-tactics-teachers.html




external image Screen+shot+2010-08-02+at+12.22.25+PM.pngGoogle Scholaris one of Google's lesser-known tools. Google Scholar is a search engine designed to search scholarly journals, Supreme Court records, and patent records. In some cases the results will link to abstracts of books and articles that you will then have to obtain from a library or book retailer. In other cases results will link to fully viewable documents.
Source http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/11/ten-search-tools-and-tactics-teachers.html



external image Screen+shot+2010-12-15+at+1.21.52+PM.png Twurdyis search tool that automatically displays the readability of your search results for you. Twurdy uses a simple color-coded system to indicate how easy or difficult it is to read a particular website in your search results. There are three types of Twurdy searches; Just Twurdy, Simple Twurdy, and Twurdy with Pop. Here's how Twurdy defines the three search types:
Source http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/11/ten-search-tools-and-tactics-teachers.html


imagesCAO0U3S7.jpgDesigned specifically for students and educators, iSEEK is a non-commercial search engine that delivers editor-reviewed results from universities, government sites and other noncommercial providers.Source http://education-portal.com/articles/20_of_the_Best_Search_Engines_for_Students.html



OJOSE The Online JOurnal Search Engine (OJOSE) is a search engine that can help you find, download or purchase scientific publications from over 60 different databases.
Source http://education-portal.com/articles/20_of_the_Best_Search_Engines_for_Students.html




imagesCA3JZ146.jpgScirus is another search engine focused on the sciences. It has indexed over 410 million scientific items, including journal articles, patent information, scientists' web pages and institutional repositories. Source http://education-portal.com/articles/20_of_the_Best_Search_Engines_for_Students.html



dmoz-directory.jpgAlthough it's technically not a search engine because it doesn't index the whole Web, DMOZ, or the Open Directory Project, offers searchable access to millions of links that have been hand-picked by volunteers who are experts in their fields. Source http://education-portal.com/articles/20_of_the_Best_Search_Engines_for_Students.html



20 Useful Specialty Search Engines for College Students
You might use ordinary search engines for business or personal use, but they’re not very useful to find academic research papers, scholarly articles nor primary sources. The following 20 useful specialty search engines can help to find those resources quickly so you can complete your project faster. From simple searches to librariesand on to archives, the following links are listed alphabetically within categories.
Source http://bestonlineuniversities.com/2011/20-useful-specialty-search-engines-for-college-students/