Thing 10 Search Tools Ninja
As I am currently working with my ENL class on a unit that culminates in a news research project, I gravitated toward the Search Tools Ninja resources. It has always been a challenge for me to teach students how to do online research effectively and efficiently. For entering and emerging ELLs, I have found that I normally end up heavily assisting them with their searches. While exploring the variety of search engines in this section, I thought about a student I have who is relatively new to the country. He has already decided to do his project on the crisis in Venezuela since that is his home country. I tested out the search engines with his topic in mind.
Duck Duck Go and Start Page: Both search engines worked and looked like Google, but simply eliminate tracking of search topics. When I searched for Venezuela news, they came up with a variety of results and some images on the home page as well. There were no ads, which takes away that distraction for students.
Million Short: This search engine immediately came up with a series of news sites with related stories (Al Jazeera, BBC, New York Times, etc...) This would make it easy for my student to choose three or four articles around the same topic and compare them for information and perspective, which we have been working on in class this year.
Sweet Search: In the about section of Sweet Search it states: " It leverages Google to search only a fully vetted "whitelist" of websites." This prompted me to look for a definition of "whitelist", which is "a list of people or things considered to be acceptable or trustworthy." Like Million Short, this engine brought up a nice, comprehensive list of news articles with no ads or distracting images on the page.
Carrot Search and Yippy: When I typed in "Venezuela news", both searches came back with a list of news stories similar to the other search engines. However, these had a sidebar with subtopics, such as "President of Venezuela", and "Government" which would make it simpler for a student to search for news articles on a large topic but narrow it down to a smaller one.
In the end, I liked Carrot Search and Yippy because of the listing of subtopics. I have students who plan to research large topics, like climate change. I think these two sites will be nice for them to help narrow big topics into sub-topics. I can easily link the search engines into the Google Classroom I've created for their project and am looking forward to seeing how they approach their research.
Duck Duck Go and Start Page: Both search engines worked and looked like Google, but simply eliminate tracking of search topics. When I searched for Venezuela news, they came up with a variety of results and some images on the home page as well. There were no ads, which takes away that distraction for students.
Million Short: This search engine immediately came up with a series of news sites with related stories (Al Jazeera, BBC, New York Times, etc...) This would make it easy for my student to choose three or four articles around the same topic and compare them for information and perspective, which we have been working on in class this year.
Sweet Search: In the about section of Sweet Search it states: " It leverages Google to search only a fully vetted "whitelist" of websites." This prompted me to look for a definition of "whitelist", which is "a list of people or things considered to be acceptable or trustworthy." Like Million Short, this engine brought up a nice, comprehensive list of news articles with no ads or distracting images on the page.
Carrot Search and Yippy: When I typed in "Venezuela news", both searches came back with a list of news stories similar to the other search engines. However, these had a sidebar with subtopics, such as "President of Venezuela", and "Government" which would make it simpler for a student to search for news articles on a large topic but narrow it down to a smaller one.
In the end, I liked Carrot Search and Yippy because of the listing of subtopics. I have students who plan to research large topics, like climate change. I think these two sites will be nice for them to help narrow big topics into sub-topics. I can easily link the search engines into the Google Classroom I've created for their project and am looking forward to seeing how they approach their research.
Terrific, glad you found the value in Carrot Search and Yippy. Even if students then go to Google, those tools help them refine and focus the concepts and subject search terms they need to use.
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