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!
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I just love it when I hear someone is putting a tool to use right away! Hooray for Kidrex!
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