Module6

Playlist Notes:

The KYVL for Kids Research Portal = cute and thorough - I appreciated the source evaluation and the reflection aspects especially since often overlooked. www.kyvl.org

I thought the Introduction to Web Search lesson plan from www.boolify.org was neat. I especially liked activity 2, where students are required to sit or stand according to the search terms used. I think it would be effective and fun. Check it out. [] I also typed in my own search using boolify, but I think if you're familiar with the operators, it's easier to just type it in yourself rather than drag and all that. If you click on Other Tools, you can link to glean.org, and then click on http://www.gleanourhistory.org. I haven't tried it, but it looks like it would be a fun intro to an immigration unit because students in a class can post all of the places they've lived and it will add up the miles and other data (looks like you can customize), enabling students to analyze their own geographic history and migration.

Ergo has many lesson plans - Targeted for Australian history, but easily tweaked for U.S. History. I don't have time to explore all of them now, but this one caught my eye. Using Twitter to have students participate in a historical figure mystery activity. http://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/teachers/activity-using-twitter-classroom-who-am-i This would be really cool, but would require a lot of advance set up. It could also be used for any concept really, any kind of mystery or 20 questions type scenario. Science - period table of elements, English Lit. - famous authors or novels, math, geography, etc....

By clicking on Get Widget on Step 9 of our playlist for Sweet Search, I discovered that Finding Dulcinea has several widgets that are really easy to copy and transfer to a wiki or website. They used this website - http://www.widgetbox.com/widgets, which has tons of widgets. The widgets come with ads that you can easily hide, unless you want to pay for the service. I didn't know that there were so many widgets out there and that they were so easy to access. A lot of fun ones too. I found this one to practice reading ASL fingerspelling. media type="custom" key="21157816"

Step 11 is on ipl.org. I think it is cool, for example, that I can link to info. from POTUS (www.potus.com), but can view the POTUS pages without the ads and the page is cleaner with the wide border. You'll see what I mean if you compare http://www.ipl.org/div/potus/gwashington.html to http://www.potus.com/gwashington.html.

Step 14: DuckDuckGo. They have a short about video at http://duckduckgo.com/about.html that quickly summarizes the unique features and advantages of this search engine. I like the fact that they don't track or filter bubble your searches. I also like the exclamation option for searching specific sites like Facebook and You Tube. I did a search related to my 11_1 topic. My search returned a ton of relevant results. There were search suggestion keyword boxes to the right that one can just click on to add to search. The page was clean, easy to read. And I liked the fact that everything loads on the same page. You don't have to click next page. For myself, that is very helpful, because I usually don't look beyond the first page of results. I even found a few You Tube videos related to my topic by typing yt! in my search. Neat search engine. This is one I'll use.

Step 17: GoGoologans http://www.lures.info/childrens_search/gogooligans_hs.html I clicked on "Version for older students" at the bottom right of the page. I like the way you can narrow down your search with the drop down menu from the entire web to specific sites. You can also narrow by time, search only titles or PowerPoint presentations. There are boxes for spell check and reference resources, and a translation box that I couldn't figure out. But it might have been a java error. You can also check to see if a site is safe by inputing the url in a designated box. This site has some really interesting features and I could see it being appropriate for a student search.

6_1 Digital Commercial on an Alternate Search Tool: DuckDuckGo

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