This week I have been looking at various search engines and comparing them. I have tried a variety of different search engines over the years, but always end up going back to Google and Yahoo. From evaluating and making specific comparisons of other search engines, I found that there are circumstances where some of the less popular search engines would be beneficial for my students to use.
As an end of semester project in my computer access class, I had the students research an assigned celebrity and develop a PowerPoint on their celebrity. It turned out to be extremely tedious and laborious for them and me(they're all special needs). After comparing the search engines this week, I have found that I could have saved all of us a lot of frustration if I would have directed them to use a subject specific search engine, such as beaucoup.com. These types of search engines have search engines within them that search specific tasks, so my students would have gotten a tighter search for their celebrities and eliminated all of the unrelated hits they were sifting through. I will definitely remember this in the future when students I work with have to research specific categories of information like that.
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2 comments:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on search vehicles and applying the activity to your students.
It is good that you were able to reflect on the lesson and turn it into a learning experience for yourself! You could also use www.clusty.com for students to perhaps choose better search keywords when the clusters are offered, and it might grant a better search as well. I like that you have the students in your special needs classes working with technology, as there are not many teachers who take the time to do that in their special ed courses. Yay, Laurie!!
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