Search Engines

This weeks assignment opened my eyes to all of the search engines available to students. I had no idea there were so many. When going through all of the search engines I decided to stay with the same topic and see which one yielded the best results. The topic I researched was Unequal Distribution of Technology in Education for my research paper in Issues. I was already regretting this topic because it was a challenge to find any relevant information.

After searching through all of the search engines some of them were very helpful. Some of these included:

• Academic Info- I liked how this provided the user with many sources based on your search. It was easy to use, but it took me to so many different places I finally ended up at Education World and found good information there.
• BASE- I liked the look of BASE because it is set up like many search engines I have used before. The reason I put this search engine in the helpful section is because I did find some useful articles, but I didn't like how I had to search through the pages to find them; this was very time consuming.
• ERIC and Google Scholar- Both of these websites I have been using to find research articles for a long time. I like the layout of both sites and they always have articles I can use for my research.
• Infotopia- This site filtered the information very well, I was able to find one article that would be helpful for my research located on the first page. I looked through more pages to see if any other information was relevant, but it wasn't. I would definitely use this search engine in the future to save searching time.
• RefSeek- This search engine provided me with some good results for my research paper; it is powered by Google, so it was set up very similar. The only thing I didn't like was when I clicked on a link and then wanted to go back, it would bring me back to the first page of results no matter what page I was on. 

The search engines that weren't as helpful included: 

• The Archival Research Catalogue- This didn't help me with researching my topic at all, but when I searched for a more basic topic it provided a lot of resources that looked helpful. I might use this in the future for other research.
• LibGuides- I found this site not very helpful because I needed to broaden my search too much before it would give me information I wanted. Some of the sites it took me to required a log in or weren't what I was looking for.
• Library of Congress- I liked how you could limit the search by formats, but when I went to type information for my research nothing came up that was helpful for me. When I tried to limit the formats to find relevant information it still didn't come up with anything useful.

Overall these search engines will help with my continuing education. As an educator I would definitely share some of these sites with my students because they are great information resources. 

I enjoyed reading the Web 2.0 article and it is very true. I remember using technology growing up and it gradually became more interactive. I remember first using the computer to learn typing and playing basic games like Oregon Trail. Then AIM and MySpace became popular and it was possible to connect to others. Today when I think of technology a major part of that is being connected. Individuals can Skype, play games together, and share information with ease without needing to leave the house. Web 2.0 is great for education because it allows students to engage and interact while learning. It provides experiences that wouldn't be possible otherwise.