Thursday 10 March 2016

KIDDLE - the new child-friendly search engine

Today I want to present a new search engine especially designed for kids.
It offers a safe search, which is very important, as well a very simple interface. It is a visual search engine, so the results it provides are more appropriate for kids. This is for example what you are shown when you search the word "Africa".

According to Kiddle policy, the first three results provided have been chosen by the Kiddle team, the following 4 results are children friendly and provide simple and positive explanations, the rest -that is, from the 8th result onwards- are offered by the safe search of Google. 

Kiddle omits some words or chain of words that may be sensitive. For example, this is what you get if you look ut the word "penis", even though we know they study it at Primary school. 
In other cases, it offers a considerably different kind of results, if we compare it what the results Google offers. This is what your kids would get, if they look up "breast" on kiddle. As you can see, totally different from what you had got in Google. 
            
This may be an interesting suggestion to use only with younger students because it may be too limited due to censorship. If you like this kind of children friendly search engines you can also have a try with these other two chil-friendly search engines. 



Tuesday 1 March 2016

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

March is Women's History Month and we will also celebrate the International Women's Day on March 8th. Thus, it is a great opportunity to explore women's contributions and achievements throughout history.


I want to present you some interesting websites that I am sure will give you some ideas to use in your classes.

On this website yu will find different materials; not only learning materials and lesson plans, but you will also find quizzes to check your knowledge about the topic.
National Women's History Museum. On this website, you will be able to view different exhibits that give an insight to women's history. There you will also find a section called "education and resources" where you will find several lesson plans. 

Some more lesson plans can be found on the website of the Library of Congress. 

Science Netlinks is a website where you will be able to find the importance of women in science and many different lesson plans. 
On My Hero, you will find lesson plans and lots of stories about women's contribution to different aspects and disciplines. 
To finish this collection of lesson plans and ideas to celebrate the International Women's day you can have a look at his interesting website. 
I hope you will find something interesting and useful to work with your students. 

Anyway, It is true that there is a lot to celebrate but there is still a long way to go in order to get gender parity!!