www.teach.science Surf and Master the Web Using the Web

Searching the internet for information is easy with online tools called search engines. Search engines can access multitudes of information 24 hours a day. To use a search engine just type in a keyword. The search engine uses these keywords to seek out the information that you are looking for in an Internet database. The search engine will return with a list of related Internet links in an ordered list. The closest matches to what you want will usually be located near the top of this list.

How do they work?
Not all 'search engines' are actually search engines. They may be web indexes, directories, search engines or some combination of these. A web index works like the index of a book and are usually quite large and difficult to navigate. A web directory is like a phone book with web sites put in categories. Web sites are manually placed on the search engine site and searching (i.e. Yahoo) only retrieves web sites in the index. A true search engine actually goes out and looks for sites that match your search words although most search engines continually index what they find so that you get results more quickly.

For a much better explanation and examples read Kimberly Roempler's article 'How the Internet is Indexed.' Also, the Signal Detection Analysis of WWW Search Engines determines which search engines supply the greatest number of relevant links.

Narrowing Your Search:
Each search engine may have hints for narrowing your search. For instance, if you type SCIENCE EDUCATION you may get back every page that contains science and every page that contains education. Typing "SCIENCE EDUCATION" or SCIENCE+EDUCATION or SCIENCE AND EDUCATION may narrow it down to pages about science education. Other boolean terms such as NOT and OR may also be used. For more help see 'Finding Information on the Internet' from the UC-Berkeley Libraries.

Some Good Directories and Indexes: (our favorites are near the top of the list)

Google

Google search engine uses a page ranking technique to find web pages that have been linked from other web pages. The results quote the part of the web page that contains your search terms to help with choosing which pages to visit

AltaVista Search Network

AltaVista from Digital Equipment Corporation gives you access to the largest Web index on the Internet: "125 million pages found on 476,000 servers, and four million articles from 14,000 Usenet news groups." The Babelfish translation engine lives here!

Wired's HotBot

HotBot boasts an enormous index of over 110 million documents on the Web and offers customizable searches by media type, date, and location. This search engine is one of the fastest on the Internet. Click on More Search Options to set up a SuperSearch.

GoTo

GoTo is very fast, uncluttered search engine based on the original World Wide Web Worm. For extra search tips, click on About GoTo.

Ask Jeeves

Ask Jeeves allows the user to search the Web by asking questions in plain English. It has a knowledge database of answers to over 7 million questions, and it "grows smarter" as more people ask questions. Answers from several search engines are returned with each query. The site also contains Ask Jeeves for Kids, a safe search engine for kids age 7 to 14.

Northern Light

Northern Light uses precision relevancy ranking to return search results. It dynamically groups results into labeled custom folders. In addition, 6100 full-text journals, books, magazines, newswires, and reference sources are part of this web site.

Dogpile

Dogpile uses 25 search engines to search the web. Three engines at a time are used to return at least 10 hits for a query.

ProFusion

ProFusion from the University of Kansas combines up to nine search engines. Personalized searches are possible including a kid safe search.

GO network

Infoseek search at GO Network allows searching without using Boolean terms. GO Network also provides a directory of web pages (GO Guides) which contain over 500,000 sites. Science is in Education/Fields of study.

Yahoo

Yahoo is a "topic-oriented" search engine of a large web resource database. It includes a small search engine to help you find things listed within it.

Yahooligans!

Yahooligans is a Web guide made specifically for kids. Contains many good educational resources for teachers and students.

Lycos

This search engine, begun at Carnegie Mellon University, will allow you to search document titles and content. Its index includes ftp and gopher information. Lycos SafetyNet protects children from unsuitable content.

Lycos Pictures and Sounds

A search engine for photos, art, designs, videos, music and noises which link directly to image and sound files on the Web.

Highway 61

Highway 61 from the Virtual Mirror is sponsored by Digiweb. This meta-search uses five search engines to return 35 - 125 hits depending on your preferences.

cnet's search.com

SEARCH.COM is a service of c|net. This search site allows you to search the entire Web or search within directories created by cnet. Science topics can be found under Learning.

Excite

This search engine does it all! In addition to searching the Web, this search engine can scan Usenet newsgroups, and has a NewsTracker which seeks out information from over 300 magazines and newspapers. Excite also has a searchable index of web-reviewed sites on the Internet. Excite also offers an e-mail look-up, a people finder, and an Internet yellow pages.

MIMS Hub Internet Database

MIMS Hub, Midlands Improving Math and Science, has a great science and math database. You will find over 500 annotated math and science resources on the web. The annotations are written by teachers for teachers. The math and science resources are divided into 18 categories. The database can either be searched by category or by a key word search.

Beaucoup! Reference/Language/Literature/Education/Schools

This web site links to a variety of search engines of educational resources that are useful for a K-12 educator.

All-in-One Search Page

This site is a compilation of various forms-based search engine tools found on the Internet. They have been combined here to provide a consistent interface and convenient ALL-IN-ONE search point.

Search All in One

Another all in one search engine similar to the site above.

G.R.A.D.E.S.

Classroom Connect's Global Resources And Directory of Educational Sites, G.R.A.D.E.S., is a library of educational Internet links designed to provide focused searches specifically for K-12 educators.

WebCrawler

This engine searches by document title and content. It offers reviews of many sites on the Internet

 

MetaCrawler

A multi-threaded search engine that combines results from Lycos, Webcrawler, InfoSeek,Yahoo, and Einet Galaxy.