Search Engines for Kids

GoGooligan 

Large, Bold font

Organize Notes feature

This engine is powered by Google’s SafeSearch and custom search engine option, though it’s clear that it’s not affiliated with or part of Google. It styles itself as an ‘educational/academic/ search engine’ for kids and teens (source: http://www.philb.com/articles/childrensearchengines.htm)

Pros:

+      +  Large text

+       + Organize Notes feature allows students to quickly organize their notes while they do research.

Cons:

-       - Minimal results. When I searched the word ‘Bomb’, I was redirected and could not view any of the results that showed up (Bombing of Hiroshima, Bombay, etc.)

-        -There is a link that reads “What is a Gooligan?” The link opens up a site called urbandictionary.com. This site has a lot of ‘slang’ terms that students may have heard from a peer or parent, heard in a song, or seen on TV. Urban Dictionary allows users to search for the definition of these words. The site contains explicit content.

f  QuinturaKids

     This site provides some animation linking to other aspects of the site (games, animals, sport and so on) with a word cloud above the search box. There wasn't any way of getting the engine to search verbatim though. (source: http://www.philb.com/articles/childrensearchengines.htm)

Pros:

+       + Related words show up after searching a certain topic.

+        +Visually appealing to kids.

+        +Games, Sports, Animals, Music, and History are shown by corresponding icons and are easy to find.

+       + Available for Iphone/Ipad in App Store.

Cons:

-        -Difficult to find exact results. When I searched for a map of the United States, of the 12 results that showed up, none of them contained a map.