JOL>Websearching
On this page, you will find the tools that I use extensively to locate online resources for almost everything I do.

 

Web Search Tool collection

Google | Image search | Google Scholar | Google Suggest | Google Syntax Reference Cheat Sheet

GoogleGuide | for beginners or advanced users, all things Google. Nicely done.

All the Web | image search: I like the image search; returns are different from Google. A very nice supplement to the Google image search.

Vivisimo: see the Web site within the search return by using the preview button. Very useful for students; they never have to leave the search page.

Clusty: clustering search tool, cousin to Vivisimo

Teoma: my favorite for finding "lists" about your topic. Use the resource section of the search return.

Soople: Soople is a front end into Google that allows the user to take advantage of all the powerful search syntax of Google without actually knowing it. The site works by isolating different types of searches within containers on the page. Very effective and powerful.

a9: produced by Amazon.com, is a front end to Google, tiles the Web results and the Image results. Users can also get a dictionary definition of their search item. Registered users can create their own personal reseach library in the bookmarks section by dragging Web results into folders created in the bookmarks section.

mamma | image search

Singingfish: locate video and sounds.

Altavista | image search

Faganfinder: directory for all seach tools, perhaps in the known universe.

( NEW ) Snap | new search tool

Technorati: search tool for tags

Flickr Multiple Tag search: searching for images that contain multiple tags.

 

VISUAL SEARCH TOOLS

Kartoo: displays a visual map of the search return with everything connected; doesn't work well for me but does for a generation of students raised on Inspiration.

Grokker: finally, an online version. Pretty cool, give it a try.

 

MUSIC

Freeplaymusic.com | use within student digiital stories without infringing on copyright.

( NEW ) ccMixter.com | new music site, download, remix and create new music-Creative Commons licensing.

 

NEW TOOLS: some things that bear watching....

 

Yahoo News Search: includes searches of blogs and Flickr imagery

a9 Beta search: Wow, very cool. Take a9, but now customize it with the different resources available now, like Wikipedia searches, Creative Commons searches, ect. I really like this.

Yahoo Mindset: allows the user to sort returns by commercial or non-commercial status.

Y!QBeta: in context search, paste in a paragraph from a source and the tool identifies keywords and performs searches based on those.

Twingine: tiled Google and Yahoo search. Formerly YaGooHooGle.

Creative Commons Flickr image search: locate imagery for teaching and learning here all categorized by different types of licensing.. Learn more about the various licensing formats here.

See instructions on how to use this search with digital storytelling.

USING SEARCH TOOLS WITH STUDENTS

Read "Using the Internet to Promote Inquiry Based Learning" to understand how to blend an essential question, a set of foundation questions, keywords, and a search strategy into a powerful research process for students | David Jakes @ Biopoint.com