Ximena Gmez Peralta

M1A1
EDC 257
I used websites KidRex KidClick!, DuckDuckGo and Google as my main sources. I work with
1st grade and so far we have not done any research on the internet. It was a very helpful to use
this sites. I have always being afraid of letting kids roam the internet because seemingly
innocent words, even with school filters can turn into really bad experiences. I recently heard
the counselor of the school entered the words balls (so she can stock her little store at school) and
assortment of information came some were sexuality explicit so based on that I made my first
search balls across all four sites the most kid friendly was Kid Rex and KidClicks but the one
with the most results was Google followed by KidRex. When I added bouncy balls even though
I got similar results the most kid friendly was Kid Rex again and the site with the most resutls
was Google again but Google had a many ads and buying options where KidRex did not. For the
second search I used new plants + kids KidRex and Google had the most and both with very
kid friendly activities or projects and the few things that Google was selling were books about
those topics. KidsClick! did not come up with any results and DuckDuckGo had way to many
advertisements and games. The last entry New Plants + kids + site:org the search results
considerably narrowed to the organizations that deal with plants and kids. Kid Rex had more
sites this time than google, and the great majority where kid friendly. Google had less and some
were kid friendly some of them were about kids but not necessarily kid oriented. I had
originally tried ipl2 for kids but I read on the website that it was closed and while they were
leaving the page up it will no longer be updated so I added the DuckDuckGo.

It is very important to teach younger students strategies for selecting effective keywords because
its really hard to decide what is reliable information in the internet. It is well documented that
learners of all ages lack strategies for locating online information (Doble & Eagleton 2015)
The Internet while is a good source of information can be a tangled web and when students or
adults alike do not have the right strategies it can impede learning. There are at least six
characteristics of the Web that can impede learning. The internet is massive, mutable, nonlinear,
multimodal, unfiltered and unbound. Without good strategies students must evaluate the
information and decide wether is reliable or not. Good strategies must be developed early on in
order to create good habits otherwise students will tend to take the path of least resistance and
develop bad habits for internet searching. (Doble & Eagleton 2015)
I teach a first grade class, so one of my main concerns is the safety and the reliability of
information that students are finding on the internet. Some of the strengths I see in the websites
I used was that KidRex even though is a kid search engine is very comprehensive just as google
can be and the activities found are gear towards kids. The sites that came up were kid friendly
with out having to add the qualifier of +kids. KidRex is a much safer place than google for
younger kids that are learning to use the web, sort of like training wheels. While it might be a
strength I also can see how it can hinder the student in some ways as they grow older. Students
must be able and know how to control the information by selecting appropriate keywords and
qualifiers to get the information they require. The two other websites where not really helpful in
finding information so I will probably not consider using them in a classroom. Most of the
students in my classroom are from a low socio-economic class and many do not own a computer
so all of these resources would have be done in class only since many do not have internet access
at home.

RESOURCES
Elizabeth Dobler and Maya B. Eagleton. Reading the Web: Strategies for Internet Inquiry,
Second Edition. Copyright 2015