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All I can say is wow what a great tool that can be used for a secondary educator.  I know some early childhood educators might be a little hesitant about using new technology but Diigo is a tool that might changes educators minds.  This tools allows educators to actually go in a take websites and highlight certain paragraphs.  To compliment this one can add a sticky note with a questions that pertains to the certain topic of the paragraph.  Sticky notes will allow groups of students to have discussions right on the web page.  Another great feature of this tool is that educators can create groups.  Groups can be the content areas that are taught.  It makes everything well organized so students can go into their class periods  or groups to make comments. Being a  Social Studies teacher this is a tool that I will use in my student teaching and beyond.  If there is any confusion here is a video explaining how to use Diigo.

There are countless search engines out there for educators.  However, which ones are appropriate to use for the difference in cognitive abilities for students.  Take a look at instaGrok.  This search engine is great for visual learners because it creates a web diagram about a certain topic.  The great thing about this website is that facts, websites, videos, images and quizzes are all present on the right hand side of the website.  After taking a in depth look at instaGrok it can be a lot of  at first but after you sift through the huge amounts of information then everything seems understandable.  WolframAlpha is another search engine that was specifically made for math educators.  However, this should not deter other content areas away because being a Social Studies teacher this website provides great facts about certain topics like the U.S. Constitution.  Spezify is a decent but it does lack some things for a image search engine.  The results for a Social Studies image search really did not come up with great images that Google might have found.  However, for someone that is new too education technology it might be something to look at.  Sweet Search and ipl2 are two more search engines dedicated to the educator and the students.  Sweet Search should be used by students because every website is evaluated by their experts.  What is convenient for history educators is that there is a separate Sweet Search dedicated for all content related to Social Studies.  Just like Sweet Search ipl2 is a website dedicated to educators and their students however this website provides more options like newspapers and magazine articles.    Google is a great search engine but a lot of features are overlooked like the advanced search feature.  This feature allows any one to change the reading levels needed.  Basic, intermediate and advanced are the three reading levels that come up which helps to find specific reading content for all the grades.  For instance, a elementary teacher would look for content labeled "basic".  In the advanced feature it allows anyone to find any type of document needed as well.  For instance, here is search for a PowerPoint on the U.S. Constitution.  Below is a slideshow of all the search engines discussed and I hope every educator gives them a overviews to see if they are usable in your classroom.
Garth
10/11/2012 05:00:16 am

A great blog. Very detailed and links everywhere. Keep working hard and posting like this.

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    My name is Jonathan McClure and I'm a history buff who also loves sports.

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