Search Engines!

Your window on the Internet! Welcome to a topical edition of The Help Desk!

Of course, "accidental finds popping up" is one reason why open Internet searches make for poor lesson plans - kids struggle to sort through the thousands of "hits," have trouble discerning what a good source is, and are easily distracted. But the kid-safe search engines below are designed to keep them on task.

KidsClick

http://kidsclick.org/

Kidsclick is a managed database (a project of the Ramapo Catskill Library System), which means the sites it contains are pre-loaded and managed by people - in this case, librarians - rather than an automated keyword-search process, like the bigger engines. Hence the "hits" will be low in number, but there won't be any surprises. Covers K-7. The sites are rated by grade level appropriateness. There are even links to lesson plans!

Yahooligans

http://www.yahooligans.com/

A decided improvement over Yahoo (see below), Yahooligans is also a directly-managed database of sites. There's distracting fun stuff and ads which make it less attractive than some, but it's generally a good kids-safe environment.

Here's a short list of popular kid's search engines that we didn't like quite as well.

• OneKey (http://www.onekey.com/) - This veteran site for kid-safe searching is now a simple portal for Google's SafeSearch (see below) - you might as well go to the source. 
• Lycozone (http://lycoszone.lycos.com/) - edgy, clever, and buried in ads - aimed at the "kid's market" rather than the educational needs of students.

Google

http://www.google.com/

Google is the clear winner amongst the open search engines, with better coverage and smashingly-short search times. For student use, there's a Preferences page where you can set SafeSearch to severely restrict what is found (available with cookies set), though, since this is an automated system, it's not foolproof. AltaVista gets runner-up honors for its clean interface.

Education World

http://www.educationworld.com/

Education World is an old Dot-Com service financed through ads and underwriters. They maintain an excellent searchable database of education sites and resources, many of them maintained on their own site. A good all-round resource - not just for searching! Another good database of education sites is located at Classroom Connect, the free resource web presence of Harcourt, Inc., though you must register to use it.

Search Engine Watch

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/

A great general resource on search engines, including and explanation on how they do their work. It also gives heads-up on which engines accept money from folks in exchange for higher search appearance. A great window onto the world of searches!

Of course, there are fans of these, but we found them to be lacking.

• Webcrawler: Webcrawler was a pioneer of automated website data gathering, but the maintainers have deliberately avoided offering any controls and filters to its searches.
• The "full service" search sites (Excite, Yahoo, Lycos): All three of these offer a wide range of services aimed primarily at commercial interests, and are buried in ads. The searches are wide open, and any customization requires registration.
• The Meta-Engines (Dogpile, MetaCrawler): These used to be all the rage since they display the search results of several search engines on a single page. However, since there are clear winners in the search engine market these days, querying the also-rans doesn't produce much additional help. We use these occasionally just for variation.