Internet Sources
Spring 2001
GED 579 / GSA 591 

Class Favorites

Search Engines Includes broad and subject specific search engines
Meta Engines Search more than one Search Engine at a time
Directories email, phone, etc
Full Text Journals/Magazines Free full text journals
Reference Sources Almanacs, maps, dictionaries, encyclopedias
Suggested Readings Articles of interest to our class
Education Sources For teachers: k-12
Web Tools Guides, Icons, Design, Headings
Business Sources Finance, Investments, Marketing
Science Sources Weather, Environment, Animal, Plant, etc.
Online Radio Radio Waves
Evaluation Sites Evaluating Web sites
Recreation  
Miscellaneous The kitchen sink

 

Search Engines

APPLE SHERLOCK  [Robert]
This may be a little out of the ordinary, but I commonly use Apple Computer's built in search tool; Sherlock. For quick searches it is very efficient and I can choose which (of many) multiple engines it accesses. It is also a main search tool for my hard drive and the servers I work with.

 

ASKJEEVES [Helen]
http://www.askjeeves.com 
My favorite search engine is AskJeeves. I got to know this site from my professor back in Korea. When I want to find it, I just can type what I want. I don't have to worry about category or any truncation. Even I make grammatical mistakes it tries to find out the closest heading. Or don't have to write a whole question. I can simply type key words. If it cannot find, it provides me other search engines. This is why I like 'Askjeeves' so much and often use. Thanks. Hyeran

ASKJEEVES [Elise]
 http://www.askjeeves.com 
As part of our homework, you asked us to send you a short description of our favorite search engine. I'm basically pretty new to looking at these things but after exploring several of them this past week I found ASK JEEVES to be particularly user friendly for a beginner. It has a simple format, uses natural language and then prompts the user with related questions. It also gives the reader related sites, offers sub-headings and ranks the sites by popularity.I also really liked the feature which offers links to three other search engines for comparison.

MetaCrawler  [Bill]
(http://www.metacrawler.com). It searches many search engines for the search criteria. It's user friendlyand identifies the search engines it searches as wellas the number of hits per search engine. At the bottom of the page it makes suggestions on how to further narrow your search. For example, I searched for: Disneyland and Paris, and received 48 hits. Metacrawler suggested I use the phrase "Disneland and Paris" and I received 17 hits. I've compared thid to AskJeeves and found MetaCrawler to give me more relevant hits most of the time. Try it!

Northern Lights [Kevin]
http://www.northernlight.com 
My favorite search engine at this stage of the game is Northern Light, though I must admit I haven't used any of them all that extensively. I like that you can search in a variety of ways that allow you to make the search fit with whatever it is you are looking for. (I like having options and being able to customize.) The search options are more like some of the databases or indexes we have used in class than most of the other search engines I have used. When you get the results, instead of ranking them, it organizes them into categories that it calls folders, and you can look at the folders that seem to most closely match whatever it is you are looking for. It seems pretty good for now; I'll have to try it out for a while and I'll let you know if I change my mind.

Northern Lights [Suhee - Renee]
http://www.northernlight.com    & Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com 
I had not known there are so many search engines on the net until i took this course. Honestly, I am very overwhelemed by so many search engines and jargons from the readings. I couldn't decide which one i have to dig into.

I just started surfing a few search engines that sounded familiar. what's my favorite search engine? i liked a little bit of each. To name a few, Norther Light and Yahoo!.

For Norther Light, it doens't carry all sorts of categories as is sometimes too comprehensive. Instead it appears more like specialized in academic information, so it doesn't make you feel astrayed or lead you in the middle of nowhere.

When it comes to Yahoo!, it is the first search engine i have used. i started using it just because it was the only one i knew of, and its name recognition had me trust it.

Now i am used to yahoo and see it updated everytime i log on. Especially its portal service is convinient to my liking.

Northern Lights [Nancy]
http://www.northernlight.com  
I like Northern Lights.  The folders help organize information.  It is good for academic searches, I have found that it yields quality articles.

 

Yahoo [Kathy]
http://www.yahoo.com/
My favorite search engine has always been Yahoo:

Yahoo is a subject based search engine and since I am usually researching information on a particular subject vs. looking for a specific website, this engine works well for my needs. It matches your search by categories and by sites. I have had more success reviewing the category results. The help section is user-friendly and it clearly identifies tips for better searching such as using quotation marks, identifying words that must appear in the results, identifying words that should not appear in the results, and support for advanced search syntax (using +, -, *, t:, u:). If a search is unsuccessful, search help is automatically offered.


About.com [Renee]
http://about.com/ 
The detailed site index on the front page differenticates About.com from other sites. i often had hard time choosing where to go on front pages of other search engines . However, the specified categories of About.com gives you a clear direction from the outset. Also it shows a neatly designed guide contrary to some sites' flamboyant images, which are rather distracting.

Once you select a category on the front page, you are brought to next page where the list of sub-cateories is. The list is left hand of the screen. Thus you can find out whether you want them or not at one look. . It is not like the feeling of peeling onions when you surf other sites.It saves your click.

The other way to find information is just simplely to type what you look for in the search window. Then hits show under seperate headings. That is, part of the earch results from About.com are followed by the ones from other sites. In addition to that, the content of the resource is very clearly summerized as is helpful to determine the choice of material.

CDNow [Renee]
i finally decided on CDnow for subject specific search engine. (hew~)

Unlike other movie search engines it has huge movie titles and information about each of the films such as synopsis, reviews and cast&crew. Plus, you can shop too.

http://www.wwwomen.com/ [Nancy]
 this looks good for women's health issues.

 www.webplaces.com [Elise]
One subject specific search engine that I think should be on our "class recommendations" site is CLIP ART SEARCHER at www.webplaces.com. It gives links to clip art sites, including art,photos, animations and sound. It could come in handy when we're designing our web pages.

http://www.quicken.com [Adrian]
I think an easy but a complete site for finance is http://www.quicken.com This page can be use for people interested in the stock market. In my opinion can be use by people that don't have much idea about the company info or by expert that need daily news.

Finance Wise [Bill]
http://www.financewise.com
Three ways to search: keyword, Smart search allows you to find company sites by name, country, type or region, and sector search consisting of 80 sub categories. Site contains a total of 3.5 million pages that can be accessed

Hobbies [Bill]
http://metaplus.com/pv/hobbies/html
Consists of 5,100 sites searched by keyword: Craft, sewing, quilting, and hobby. Within each section you can search by store and manufacturer/supplier.

 

Meta Engines

 

Directories

 

Full Text Journals/Magazines

www.terra.com  [Adrian]
is a web site that carried the most important new around the world in its Spanish or English language. Some people had ask to me about Spanish site where they can practice their high school Spanish, and I think this is a good site because you can se the English version

"The Web- Teaching Zach to Think" [Kathy]
http://www.anovember.com/articles/zack.html
 I wanted to share this article which discusses why it is imperative to evaluate websites (and teach our students to do the same) when researching online.

Some Thoughts on the Internet Uses in Schools [Nancy]
http://www.fi.edu/fellows/fellow3/oct98/index.htm 

REFERENCE SOURCES

SUGGESTED READINGS

 * Here’s another interesting article about the effects of technology on today’s students and teachers for the educators in our classroom: "Children of the IT Revolution"
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/01/13/super.kids.idg/index.html [Kathy]

 

EDUCATION SOURCES

http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/aboutGDC.html  [Nancy]
Parents, teachers, children and adults will enjoy visiting this website created by Dr. Linda Silverman a respected leader in gifted education.  The site offers information on giftedness and visual spatial learners.  Articles, books, explanations and services are available at this site. This site is a great place to be introduced to the world of giftedness yet is offers advanced information for people who are looking for in depth information on this topic. The Journals for Advanced Development are terrific. 

www.wcom.com/marcopolo  [Robert]
Interenet content for the classroom. All sites contained within the database are "blue-ribbon" approved for school content. National educational standards for most lesson plans and resources are included. Sponsored and supported by: National Council on Economic Education National Geographic Society National Endowment for the Humanities/Council of the GreatCity Schools National Council of Teachers of Mathematics American Association for the Advancement of Science The Kennedy Center

One subject specific search engine that I suggest we add to our "Class Recommendations" site is Eric: http://ericir.syr.edu/ 
Eric is the Educational Resources Information Center and it is a federally funded national information system.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,41704,00.asp [Paul]
 Came across this article from PCWorld web site: AltaVista Dumps Community Services for Searches Company says it's a business choice unrelated to a poor review of its child-protection features. James Evans, IDG News Service Wednesday, February 14, 2001

 

 

WEB TOOLS

www.webplaces.com [Elise]
One subject specific search engine that I think should be on our "class recommendations" site is CLIP ART SEARCHER at www.webplaces.com. It gives links to clip art sites, including art,photos, animations and sound. It could come in handy when we're designing our web pages.

Website Garage: [Kathy]
http://www.mezzacca.com/cool/newpage5.htm
It evaluates websites and offers recommendations for improvements for free. I thought it might be a fun exercise for our class when we complete our homepages. The overall page summary for St. Mike's was excellent. Kudos to Brian!

Business Sources

http://www.quicken.com [Adrian]
I think an easy but a complete site for finance is http://www.quicken.com This page can be use for people interested in the stock market. In my opinion can be use by people that don't have much idea about the company info or by expert that need daily news.

Science Sources

EVALUATION SITES

ALA Guidelines http://www.ala.org/acrl/undwebev.html

- The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources
   http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html (examples provided)

RECREATION

Very Best Meals [Heather]
http://www.verybestmeals.com
A great cooking site that offers: recipies, meal planning, construction
of shopping lists, and gives the latest facts on cooking and nutrition.
The menu suggestions seem to contain a wide variety including cooking
classics, ethnic foods, and vegetarian. One can create a weekly menu
plan, print out recipies and a shopping list or look up recipies or food
topics of interest. The sign-up is free and navigation is easy.
The site is produced by Nestle but does not push its products shamelessly.

 

Miscellaneous

The National Forum on People's Differences [Bill]
http://www.yforum.com
Known as The National Forum on People's Differences, it is a forum where anyone can post a question on subjects such as class, gender, sexual orientation, age, general diversity, religion, sensitive matters, geography, disabilities/challenges... and get responses from other people in the hopes of educating themselves and each other on our differences. You can also search the database by keyword, geographically, and by any of the categories listed above. Dare to ask, dare to answer! Award winning! Check it out, I highly recommend it.

http://www.cnn.com/SEARCH/index.html [Kathy] 
This is a great site to go to for current information. From the main page you can choose among these categories: World, U.S., Weather, Business, Sports, Politics, Law, Sci-Tech, Space, Health, Entertainment, Travel, Career, Local and In-Depth. CNN’s site search is designed to be easy to use. Only documents containing all of the words in a search will be returned. Search results are sorted by date first, then ranked by relevance on that day. If your search is not time sensitive, you can choose the option "sort by relevance." Use the hyphen key to search by phrases such as: computers-in-the-classroom.