Thing 9: Databases and Search Tools

Love it!  A lesson on databases!  Actually, I'm still very much a beginner on a lot of topics, but databases, those I'm pretty good at.  I have both a wiki, which I had created first, and then later, a library webpage for both buildings I work in with widgets on it.  I love widgets!  I believe in anything that will reduce the number of clicks that will get a student to the information they are looking for.  My students know the best place to start their research is at my webpage with all the widgets and links.

I decided to explore some of the search tools I hadn't heard of.  It seems like there are new ones all the time!
Libguides.  What's the deal with libguides?  Why are they so popular?  I did start one; I loaded a catalog search widget, a video, etc, but, in all honesty, I just don't see what makes them any more useful than a webpage with links and helpful classroom pages.  I guess I'll have to work on my libguide a little more.  But I DID see the value in searching other people's libguides!  Wow!  There is a lot of great ideas out there!

Finally, I was very interested in some of the kids search engines that were mentioned.  I knew about kidsclick, which I like and do show to my students.  I did NOT know about kidrex and sweetsearch4me.  I LOVE kidrex.  I am putting my 5th graders on that this week!  I compared it to Sweetsearch, and that site was good too, but I just found kidrex to be a little more intuitive in what I was searching for, and I liked the webpages it brought up, like national geographic, internet public library, etc.  I have added a widget to my webpage; maybe I'll have the kids try both, and see which they like better!