Some more search engines

In addition to the previously mentioned search engines, you might like to look at these.

Redzee

Redzee presents results as a circle on the page, you just click and drag to move the results around. Again, it’s a visual search engine so you get to see the pages before you visit them.

web site: http://www.redzee.com/

Scour

Scour allows you to search Google, MSN and Yahoo all at once. You can also sign up to receive points which can be redeemed from Visa, although accumulating enough points will probably take you the rest of your life.

web site: http://www.scour.com/index.html

Firefox users

If you use Firefox as your browser (and you should because it rocks), you can use the Google Preview add-in. This puts a little thumbnail of the web page next to each Google result.

web site: http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/

web site: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/189

Some useful search engines

Here are some new search engines which should be useful in the classroom. They are particularly good for classrooms because they are visual search engines, and let kids have an idea of what the page looks like.

Viewzi

Viewzi is great because it gives you different options to search by. You just enter a search term and then choose the type of search that fits it best.

web site: http://www.viewzi.com/search/

SearchMe

SearchMe is similar to Viewzi. It uses a carousel approach so that you can just scroll through the images of the web pages. They are nice and large, great for kids, and you can narrow your search topic at the top of the page. You can also see the results in a full screen mode.

web site: http://www.searchme.com/Initial.html

Yoozila

Yoozila is a simple search engine like Google, but also shows a thumbnail of the web page next to its entry.

web site: http://www.yoozila.com/

Chinese Zon

A promising looking web site for learning Chinese is Zon. It is a bit like a virtual world where students can practice their Chinese. It begins in an airport and students have to navigate their way through, asking and answering questions.

web site: http://zondev.educ.msu.edu/WebFront/

SpeedyMarks

SpeedyMarks is a great start page with visual bookmarks. You can add your favourite sites to it and it will place a visual bookmark on the page. When you click on the picture, it will open in a new tab. You can also sign up with your email and it will store your bookmarks for use on any computer. Otherwise, it will just remember your bookmarks on one computer.

web site: http://www.speedymarks.com

eCalc

Sure the calculator on your computer is great for adding up stuff, but what if you need more? eCalc is a full scientific calculator, available online and free. It even has all those buttons for cos, sin and tan, which once upon a time I knew what were for, but now don’t have a clue.

web site: http://www.ecalc.com/

Scrapblog

Scrapblog is an online scapbooking site. I found it great for doing my yearbook entry for my class – you add your photos, put in some text, and use the backgrounds and stamps provided by Scrapblog. Once you finish your scrapblog, you can save the pages as jpeg files and download them. Be aware though that the size of the jpeg is not the same as the web page – I found that two fitted nicely on an A4 page in Word.

web site: http://www.scrapblog.com/

Acrobat.com

Acrobat.com is the latest offering from Adobe. It combines an online word processor (Buzzword), a pdf creator and a file manager. It also gives you 5gb of storage for your documents free. You can also share your documents with others just by adding their email address, allowing them to co-edit your documents. Acrobat.com also comes with the new Acrobat Reader 9 as an AIR application for your desktop. Acrobat.com is also very nice to look at, unlike most free word processing applications.

web site: https://www.acrobat.com/

Spelling City

I hate spelling tests. I hate giving them and I hate marking them, especially when I have three or four spelling lists each week (I teach a multi-age class). So I use Spelling City. On Spelling City, I just type in the list of words for the week, save it and post a link to my blog. My students can go to the list, hear the words spoken and put in a sentence, play games and then I use it to test them (you can print their results for your files and a nice certificate for them to keep). They have about 30,000 words on the site, so it is rare that one on your list won’t be there. And it is an American site, so be prepared for the pronunciation if you teach in a British school (like me) or another nationality’s school

web site: http://www.spellingcity.com/

Speech Bubbles on Photos

Ever needed to put speech bubbles on photos? Great for newsletters and yearbooks. Here are two sites which make it simple:

Superlame

web site: http://www.superlame.com/

Kyolo

web site: http://www.kyolo.com/

Ekpenso

Ekpenso is an online mind-mapping tool. It can also be downloaded as an Adobe AIR application or integrated into the learning management system Moodle.

web site: http://en.ekpenso.com/

For another excellent desktop mindmapping program, try Cayra. Although it can be a bit fiddly, but it is beautiful to look at and my students love it. You can also save the mindmaps as a picture file so you can insert them into Microsoft Word or similar programs.

web site: http://cayra.net/

Kigose

Kigose is a new search engine for kids. Its designers state:

Kigose only includes public websites that are for educational purposes only. The list of the websites included are suggested by teachers, parents and students. We also encourage school community to respect copyright policy by creating citation.

A great thing about Kigose is that you can suggest web sites to help build it.

web site: http://www.kigose.com/

Face in the Hole

Face in the Hole is a great bit of fun. You can upload your photo and then put it on the body of someone else. The results are often hilarious.

web site: http://faceinhole.com/home.asp

Edublogs

Edublogs is an excellent blogging platform for teachers. I use it to inform parents of what is happening at school and in my class, and to post homework and web site reviews. It is easy to set up an account, and because it is designed for teachers, they have an excellent support blog with ideas for using blogs in the classroom.

web site: http://edublogs.org/

21 Classes

If you are looking to set up blogs with students, an easy way to begin is with 21 Classes. Teachers can sign up for their own blog and then set up student blogs inside the main blog. I like that it is secure (all blogs need a password to access) but that all students signed in can view and comment on other students blogs. 21 Classes will also send you a weekly update with all the activity by your students. The only caveat is that each blog gets a maximum of 2mb of storage, so it is only really useful for text blogs. I use it for my students’ homework – it’s quick to check their work and it’s all available in the one place.

website: http://www.21classes.com/

Tutpup

A great site for practicing maths and spelling. Similar to the excellent Mathletics site http://www.mathletics.com.au/ but currently free (in beta). Teachers can sign up for a class code which allows them to track their students’ results.

website: http://tutpup.com/