I must admit it was a surprise for me to hear in the Joyce Valenza conference that Google keeps a profile of my regular searches and so the order of what is listed is based on that. Naive of me! I did however assume that the companies etc that pay more, get listed more easily.
Anyway, I've started having a look at the different search engines. I began with DeweyDigger.com because it was such a unique way of searching. I thought it could be useful as another way of finding resources to use with classes. Interesting idea but it really wasn't that helpful for me and I don't think it is one that I'll use. Something interesting to note is that I looked up Australia - what with the history in the Australian Curriculum - and was very surprised to see South Australia not there as an option - when I looked more closely, neither were a few of the other states/territories - Vic, NSW, QLD were. I don't think I'd bother with this site, interesting as it is, I would do a direct search in one of the other search engines.
I have then had play with the other search engines. I used the term "Australian animals" - a typical primary school search - to see what each found. Interestingly, Quiki found nothing as it didn't have a quiki of that name. I then tried "Adelaide" as the search term, with greater success. I thought it was ok and unique with the multimedia but a little bit limited. One to watch I think.
With blekko, Twurdy and Kngine, they all listed similar results. I found blekko a bit confusing and when I tried the slashtags suggested, didn't get anything remotely like what I wanted - my own did though. I really quite like Twurdy and can certainly see me using this as it often takes time to find text appropriate for primary aged kids through Google. I often do a search like "Australian animals information for kids" to get similar information in Google.
I also tried using "Searchypants" - a search engine that Joyce Valenza mentioned. This is very simple to use and would be useful for kids I think, particularly JP. Similar results were found. You can also pretty it up a bit in the same way as you can with igoogle. It is also good in that you are more guaranteed to hit only safe sites for kids.
It has been good to spend the time looking at different search engines as it is very easy to only use Google.
Oooh thanks for the tip about Searchypants, I like that it filters the Google results so they are "safe" to use :o) i'm loving all your posts Sue, especially when you point other sites and apps that you've discovered!
ReplyDelete