Teachers’ and Parents’ Guide to Web Search
The Web can be an overwhelming place for young students, but in today’s technology-driven world they need to take advantage of all it has to offer. Parents and teachers can equip children with the skills needed to search wisely, recognize unreliable material and stay safe while surfing the Web. Use the Teachers’ and Parents’ Guide to Web Search to find out how.
Expand All Guide SectionsHelping Students Search the Web
There are plenty of resources available to parents and teachers to help students search the Web more effectively. Use the links below to find search engines that are tailored for students, and get resources that show you how to help students evaluate the information they find online.
Insights for Helping Students Search the Web
- The best way for parents and teachers to help students search effectively is to become more familiar with Web research. The findingDulcinea Guide to Web Search has more detailed explanations of the concepts introduced in this guide, such as what the Internet is, how search engines work, how to get better search results, how to evaluate Web sites and how to conduct effective online research.
- Looking for ways to teach students about safe surfing or techniques to filter what students can browse? See our Internet Safety for Kids Web Guide.
Top Sites for Helping Students Search the Web
To teach students about safe surfing …
National Crime Prevention Council provides a basic guide for parents to ensure that students are using safe Internet practices.
Surfing the Net with Kids covers online safety for parents, teachers and students. Choose a safety topic of interest on the right navigation bar to learn more about cyber bullying, parental control and even safety tips and information about specific sites such as MySpace and YouTube.
Federal Bureau of Investigation has a guide for parents about online sexual predators, using information drawn from actual investigations. It contains a list of warning signs that indicate a student might be at risk of exposure to sexual predators, advice on what to do if parents suspect that their student is communicating with a sexual predator and advice on how to minimize the risk each student faces.
To filter Internet content …
GetNetWise offers overviews of a variety of tools for parents that allow them to control the Internet use of their children. It provides links to tools that monitor kids’ Internet activity, limits their time online and filters specific content such as violence or sex. This list is a mixture of free and subscription-based Web applications and software packages.
To teach students how to evaluate information online …
Microsoft has an article titled “Teach kids about hate and misinformation on the Internet.” The article points out that the Internet is a great learning resource but is also full of information that may be misleading or just plain false.
Discovery Education hosts “Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators.” Schrock, an expert in technology and education, has created “Critical Evaluation Surveys” for students to complete as they evaluate a Web site. The surveys are available for elementary, middle school and secondary school in HTML, PDF and Word formats.
findingDulcinea outlines the questions that a student should ask to determine whether a site is reliable in “Easy Steps to Evaluate Web Sites.”
To teach students about plagiarism …
Plagiarism.org has lots of information about what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. Printable lesson plans and handouts help teachers integrate plagiarism education into the curriculum and encourage original thinking.
For kids’ search engines …
Search Engine Watch writes about and reviews search engines. This list of search engines for kids provides an interesting variety of trustworthy research tools.
findingDulcinea highlights some of the best search engines and directories tailored specifically to students in the “Using Search Engines to Get Better Search Results” section of its Students' Guide to Web Search.
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