Kids search engine - Kigose

A search engine for kids is kigose. It includes some search tips (I suspect that these would be useful for everyone!). In the 'Internet Safety' area there is a section where you can input a site's web address to give you a diagnostic output about the site - very useful for teachers as it is quick and easy.

There are also areas for Art, Literature, Maths, Social Studies, Sports, Technology, and Science. By clicking on these you will find links to appropriate web sites.

In addition there is a 'translation' area where you can have text translated from one language to another as well as a unit conversion area. Very useful site to use in the classroom.

Boolify

Boolify is a fantastic search engine designed for children to use. It helps them develop their information literacy skills by becoming familiar with Boolean searching.

It illustrates how each change they make changes their results. These results are filtered through Google's Safe Search STRICT technology but as they say "no filtering technology is 100% secure".

There are also some Word documents to download and use in the classroom which have some activities about evaluating web sites, basic Boolean searching and refining search results. Currently being developed are documents about Venn diagrams.