Searchasaurus: my educational finding tool

Today I submitted my part of our Finding Tool project. My "letter of the alphabet" was L, which stood for Education.

The entry as it stood included two links:

ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)

Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators

After looking them over, I think they are great and should still be included. I also wanted to add one more.

Ebsco Databases for Kids: Student Research Center, Kids Search, and Searchasaurus.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=uid

Sample question: I'm in second grade and I need to do a report on Cleopatra. I need information that isn't too hard to read.

Same answer: Searchasaurus is great for giving kids your age information. From the Searchasaurus homepage, type "Cleopatra" (or any topic for any future report you do, as well!) and then all the articles you can use will be listed.

Path: Previously explored Searchasaurus for another class and found it very useful for learners that aren't advanced readers

My special-only-for-blog-addendum:

Three of Ebsco's databases are intended for children and are useable for them: Student Research Center, Kids Search, and Searchasaurus. Those are in order from the ones most appropriate for older students to the ones more suited for younger students. The Student Research Center provides magazines, newspapers, books, encyclopedias, biographies, radio and television news transcripts, country reports, state/province reports, primary source docments, photos, maps and flags and divides its information into the following topics: Arts & Media, English & Language Arts, Business, Careers, Current Issues, Health, History, Math, Science, Social Studies, Sports and Technology. Kids Search provides the same resources, and is divided into Animals, Arts & Music, Geography, Health, In the News, Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies and Sports, with both the words and a visual image for the topic. Searchasaurus, my personal favorite, doesn't clearly state which resources it uses, but sorts its content into the following categories: Animals, Art & Music, Health, History, People & Places, Science & Math, Sports and Stories.

Each interface is perfect for its intended audience. Kids Search and Searchasaurus are good at using a telling icon above the words (sometimes an icon, sometimes a costumed dinosaur!) to make it clear, even for early readers. Student Research Center and Kids Search don't let the user browse. Searchasaurus does have a browsing feature, again with both text and visual searches. For Student Research Center, the simple search doesn't specify, but seems to search by subject. Kids Search is the same way. Searchasaurus' simple search is a topic search.

I asked each of these databases "How fast do pecan trees grow?" and each answered that "no results were found." I assume this means none of these databases have natural language recognition.

Kids Search and Searchasaurus both let you search images (or "pictures" as it is listed on Searchasaurus) easily from their home page. The Student Research Center also lets you search images, but not as clearly from the home page.

Student Research Center is probably not going to prevent students from using Google or Wikipedia first, but they might be more likely if using it means they don't have to do any required additional work for evaluating Internet resources. Kids Search and Searchasaurus are must more engaging and tantalizingly designed.