Project 15 - Search Engines

  I plan on becoming a high school history teacher. Often in history classes, research papers are required. Most research in our technology era is done through search engines. Search engines allow students to access the whole internet for specific information.

  Wolfram Alpha is known as an answer engine or a computational knowledge engine. People submit questions, and Wolfram responds back with answers from other websites. The first thing I noticed on Wolfram was that directly underneath the search bar, there were 30 example categories already set. When I clicked on the people and history category, for example, it took me to a page where one can find information on people, historical events, historical periods, genealogy, etc.I honestly wish I had known about this search engine before now, due to it's specificity and helpfulness. I will definitely use this search engine while finishing college, and recommend it to my future students for their own research.

  iSEEK is a search engine directed towards students and teachers. They advertise as being safe, authoritative, time saving, and intelligent. It's information comes from universities, government sites, and other noncommercial providers. Once you type something in the search bar and submit, it takes you to a page overloaded with content. My favorite aspect was the map of related terminology that directs you to related pages. I would also reccomend this search engine because it has plenty of content.

  OJOSE is unique in that it compromises only of scientific publications. This includes journals, articles, research papers, books, etc. I probably would not recommend this search engine, considering I will be a history teacher, but also because it's layout and setup is rather outdated and minimalistic.

  DuckDuckGo is a search engine that looks similar to Google, but has a lot less ads. They advertise as "The search engine that doesn't track you" by not collecting personal data. All results are found on the first page and it has a simple aesthetic. You can also change the look of your page.

  Over the years Ask has become as popular as Google. This search engine has a clean and clear setup with search results being more up to date. One nice thing about Ask is that after searching a topic, to the right of the page is often asked questions and answers about the same topic. Users searching typically have the same questions, making the serching process a whole lot quicker.

  Mahalo is different in that it is human powered, hiring employees to physically sift through endless content. You won't get thousands of results, but the results you do get will be extremely valid. This would aid students in getting correct information, not overwhelmed by too much information.

  Yippy is a search engine that gets its information by searching other search engines. This is helpful in finding obscure or uncommon information on a topic. They advertise as family friendly, 100% private, spam free, less duplicates, and having top resources. This is their "Five Star Approach".

  The Internet Archive advertises as a universal access to knowledge. It is a non profit, online library.They stress the importance of having a library even with all of our technology, and this website helps to keep up with that. It is very research based, giving students access to a library from their computers wherever they are.