LOVE LOVE LOVE KidRex.org! I normally introduce search engines (KidsClick, Internet Public Library for Kids, and Yahooligans-very limited because I don't really like it) to students in third grade. I had a particularly inquisitive group of second graders this year, and when I saw KidRex listed here I decided to use it with them. We worked in Kidspiration creating Wonder Maps with a topic in the middle, and keywords to support the topic around the edge. I modeled for the children using their topic and one keyword to find a website...we had "Dogs Husky," "Porcupines spikes," "Legos Star Wars," and a number of other topics the children were interested in. While the sites are most often not at the reading level of my second graders, they really enjoyed the interface, and loved that a picture came up next to the site. I loved that I would have less worries about what weird kinds of images may pop up, or if sites were too technical, ad laden, or otherwise worthless. While second graders would need lots of guidance from adults to actually gather detailed info from many of the sites, I liked that these sites have already met a criteria to be included in KidRex.
My fourth graders are already well entrenched in "Googling." Not really from my instruction but because it is what their parents do, and lets face it, it's a Google world. I showed KidRex as an alternative to Google for pictures because I did not want them doing image search on their own at school. They were impressed that they could get great pictures along with the websites that came up. The added bonus was that it was very easy to copy and paste URL info for giving credit (all to often students give me the Google URL instead of the website URL when giving photo credit).
KidRex gets two thumbs up and a widget on my search engine page!
Get the KidRex widget here.
Widgets--So I did try putting some widgets on my site. Some worked, some did not. I am not an html expert, but I can copy and paste, and add extra lines in the code an such. Unfortunately, our school subscribes to Teacher Web, I don't love this program, but it is easy to manage and maintain (I have been meaning to revamp my site using a wiki, so I am excited about thing 10--I just hope I finish in time). Teacher Web is best for someone who can barely send email. It does have an html editor option in some of the page layout features, but when I cut and pasted the code in what I thought was the correct space, it did not always work out.
I searched some of our databases besides the Widget links provided by Polly. I did find one for (click for code) Teen Health and Wellness and tried to add it. It was buggy--Don't know if that is from teacher web or from the code for the widget, I suspect teacher web is the issue. I finally did get it to work.
I looked for a Gale widget. You had to have some information about your account which I wasn't sure about since we order through BOCES. However, a short email to customer service, and a response a few days later, I had the necessary info. Check out my added widgets.
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