Our site is multi kids search engines where students can search many things such as the web, images, videos, songs and many more – as suggested by teachers and other users. We hope you can write something about us as well.

Kigose
Kids Search Engines

http://www.kidrex.org/
http://www.kids.net.au/
http://www.kidsclick.org/
kids.quintura.com/
middlespot.com/

Used to use searchme.com too but it doesn’t seem to be working at the moment.

The question of “Why?” are we assigning a certain task becomes very important. Is the point to teach students how to search? or to put them in contact with great web-based sources? If it is the latter then why have younger students spend time trying to navigate search engines.

Many of the above comments hit the nail on the head with references to teachers who can’t sort sponsored advertisement based links from authentic results. One question we struggle with in our school is how do we do quality training for our teachers in the area of technology?

@Paul Your link is very similar to one that I found when searching for an image for this post. I also appreciate the point towards the ThinkingMaps site – but you are right, middle ground is a good place to be, the place that allows some freedom without giving up on structure. After all, we do have to assess where our students’ skills are at so that they don’t think that rehashing others’ content is the way to go.

@patriciacone It’s definitely not just the kids who struggle to make sense of the results of a Google search. I’ve worked with many teachers who can’t tell the sponsored links from the search results, who could not tell you what the cached version is or even an awareness that advanced search capabilities are available. I also have seen more than my fair share of kids citing “Google” as their reference for their research. Their understanding seems to be that Google is one big website with all of the answers – and sadly, many educators do too.

@Russel I appreciate what you are saying about making a rod for one’s back with regards to handpicked sites. What concerns me is the number of my colleagues who would not effectively know how to compile even one of these hotlists. We seem to have outsourced much of this professional critical thinking out to edna, Links Plus and even Wikipedia. Again though, like Paul, your suggestion about middle ground is probably where I personally need to go. In my role as coordinator however, I have to think about how to empower my colleagues and ensure that they have the skills to find that middle ground.

As you know, I teach maths to this age group in a middle-senior school (read “high school”) setting. So, kids doing open research is not part of my normal practice. [perhaps greater access to computers would change that[?]].

However, developmental readiness is a huge issue for me. By the time kids get to Year 7 there is a 5 year spread in developmental readiness.

To polarize the issue for simplicity:
1. There are those who want to shovel it into the kids regardless because they have to be ready for – [fill in the blank according to the need of your argument]. I am definitely not in this camp as you can tell from my tone.
2. There are those who see only the student and her need, regardless of where she is in the system. Each student must be given the opportunity to develop at her own pace.

I began my career at 2. But I have come to see this position as naive. It is a recipe for rapid burnout.

So, 18 years into a teaching life, I try to provide enough structure for the late developers and enough freedom for early developers within a frame that won’t kill me.

Graham, I think I am saying that while I agree with Treadwell, there are the everyday practicalities of teaching that restrict what we can do. You have to compromise.

Paul’s compromises seem practicable.
1. A kid friendly search engine puts some fences around them.
2. Thinking maps etc will help them to sort out their thinking and generate key focus questions.

A couple of other thoughts.

Teaching them good search strategies might be something that you could do without too much effort.

But, I reckon, having a handpicked set of sites for everything task you set them would be a lot of work… perhaps too much.

I remember a way long time ago when the web was new, and two “experts” were talking to us the teachers about doing research. Their comment was that we need to teach students how to read to find information; in fact one could use pages from an out-of-date encyclopedia to begin to teach the basic skills.

I find that my students of this age group don’t know how to effectively read anything let alone start searching the internet using Google. When they do come to a possibly useful site, it is my experience that if they can’t find what they are looking for at the top of the page, in the heading or the first sentence, they will cease looking. As well, most of the sites on the internet need reading skills well above those of my students in order to be deciphered. Most treat web pages like a game and if it doesn’t entertain them they will let themselves be distracted by the advertising.

There has been a lot of good research done on reading for information. It also applies to using the internet.

http://www.kidrex.org/
This is a google based kid safe search tool.

I teach year 7/8 pupils in NZ and I agree with Mark Treadwell on this one. Critical literacy skills are the key to using the internet for research with this age. We must be teaching them to identify main points, summarise key ideas, sift and sort etc etc.
I have been teaching my class how to use thinking maps
http://www.thinkingmaps.com/
to help them organise their thinking and make stuff manageable.
There is always a middle ground. I scaffold for some things by providing sites bookmarked on our intranet page. For other things they are free to graze. Teaching them how to use Google effectively is a good starting point.
I clearly remember a point perhaps 10 or 12 years ago when one of my pupils handed me an assignment. I gave it straight back and said to him, “Microsoft can have an ‘A’ for this work but you need to resubmit”. He had handed me an 8 page printout from Encarta thinking I would be thrilled with all the work he had put in.