Google has been the dominating search engine for several years in and out of education. Google is not the only search engine and we all know that. Several tools are available that make searching not just Google but all the other search engines at the same time. The following post will showcase those search engines as well as some other video and image search engines.
Boounce is a search engine/add-on for Firefox that allows users to easily "bounce" from one search engine to another. Boounce includes tradition search engines, vertical search engines, and site-specific search engines. See the video below for more information.
Dagadop is a search engine dedicated to allowing users to search through YouTube videos easily. One the left the video will display and on the right are the videos related to your search. No need to leave a page to watch a different video from your search. You can create an account and this will allow you to add favorites and create playlist as well.
PicsLikeThat is a website for searching similar images. The images load on a canvas that you can easily view and click on to zoom in and see. When you find a picture that you are looking for, you double click on that image and it will find any picture containing similar images. See a video below for how it works.
Quotecoil is a search engine for discovering quotes. You can search by full quotes, authors, or keywords. If you like your kids to journal and respond to quotes, this would be a great site to use.
Oolone is a visual search engine. Type in what you are searching for and this search engine will provide screenshots of each webpage that represents your search. There are 6 webpages per "slide," because the format puts the search results in a slide show format. Very useful for visual learners. If an image is not available, it provides their logo on the screenshot.
Sperse searches Google, Yahoo and Bing along with its own database and
filters for duplicate results returning more comprehensive, relevant and
fast results to the users.
Sperse provides several search options to its users, some may include
the ability to search Images, Videos, News, Shopping, Blogs, Dictionary,
Forums, Wikipedia, PDF File extensions and many more. Users will also be able to optionally streamline their selections
through Sperse's ability to offer color images displayed in conjunction
with the selected results.
Photo Pin is a website that allows bloggers to easily search for free images that they can use on blogs. This would be a great website for students who are writing blogs.
FrazeIt is a website that provides users the ability to search for phrases that will help them in their writing. Great for those writers that struggle putting on paper what they want to convey.
More than 100M phrases indexed, all coming from top news writers.
6 languages supported.
Words & phrases suggestions.
Filter by form,zone or context.
Regular expressions: fill*,fi?l,etc.
Context,translate and define capabilities for each search result.
Famous quotes search by Author,Occupation,Religion and more.
Here is a site you might be interested in bookmarking and checking back regularly for new updates. edCode is a website created by a physics teacher that also has an interest in EdTech. The focus is create and provide free open source EdTech resources to teachers. Currently there are two tools available for free.
Flubaroo is a tool that enables "quick and easy grading of online assignments using Google Forms." The purpose is to help teachers learn to save time and also gain insight into how the students are doing. Flubaroo can be used for any assignment in and out of the classroom. For more information, visit the website and see the video below.
GR8POLL is a free tool that allows users to poll students using text messages, email or a web based form. The tool is new and currently in testing, but worth sharing. You can request to be a part of the pilot by visiting the link above.
To learn more about the Open Source Development of EdCode, click HERE.
If you use Windows Live Email account, they are getting ready to reduce the amount of storage available on the SkyDrive from 10 GB for free to 7 GB. If you act now, you can get a free upgrade to 25 GB. This is important because that is the MOST free space available on the web. See directions and sample images below.
Directions:
1.) Access your Webmail.
2.) Click on the "More" Link at the top and then click on "SkyDrive"
3.) There will be an option at the top for the free upgrade, click on the link.
4.) Select the free upgrade and you are good to go.
Formerly known as "Read It Later," Pocket is a the new website and Tablet app that allows you to easily save websites, articles, links, etc that you would like to read later. To find out more about this change, see their blog post about the update. Pocket is available for Apple, Android, and Kindle. You can also add it in over 300 applications currently available on smartphones and tablets. For more information see the video below.
I have recently become acquainted with watching and learning new ideas and concepts from watching various TED Talks on an assortment of topics. TED, by the way stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. Watching the videos can provide you with free ideas, free thoughts, and free lessons on tons of topics ranging from entertainment to education to science to technology. The number of videos that you can watch is actually quite astonishing. You can search for TED talks using various tags and categories. You can also view them in many different ways if you have an iPhone or iPad or even an Android phone or tablet, you can get an app to watch the videos.
If you are interested in getting the newest information from TED, you can follow TED Talks and TED News on Twitter to stay on top of the latest videos that are available. You could also follow TED on Facebook as well.
What I really like about TED is the ability to search through the Tags and find videos that might relate to a topic that I am teaching. I am getting ready to teach a lesson in Economics about Affects on the U.S. Economy. So I decided to search through TED and see what I could find about Economics and Trade. Within that search I found a video about how consumerism is changing in a post-crisis world. Perfect for my students as we were discussing what affects consumer confidence and consumer spending.
When looking through the videos, I decided to check on
"Most Viewed" as well. The most viewed video on all of TED is the talk
with Sir Ken Robinson about how "Schools Kill Creativity." It has been
shared numerous times, but I thought I would share it below as well. You can find more videos tagged for education HERE.
TED is not just for adults....TED can be for your classroom as well. Here are videos for your subject matter that you can search through and watch:
AudioViator is a website that allows users to create audio tours of cities, museums, etc. This website could be used to create tours from field trips that students go on or to create tours of cities or attractions in geography classes. Would also be a great way to create audio tours of places and attractions in your local towns. There are several tours already posted on the website that could be used in the classroom as well and you can find those by clicking on various continents and countries.
Each tour can provide points of interest, maps, and pictures that will help visitors get a better understanding of the audio tour that they are listening too. Each tour contains the placement on a map, a description, the subjects it will cover, and data about each one (visitors, downloads, date, length, etc). There is also a section for writing comments which could be utilized in the classroom as well. For each tour you can download it or stream it...although the stream took quite a while to load.
Boounce is a search engine/add-on for Firefox that allows users to easily "bounce" from one search engine to another. Boounce includes tradition search engines, vertical search engines, and site-specific search engines. See the video below for more information.
