Nettrekker

1. * An Overview – click on “Take a Tour”
2. * Nettrekker Westford Teacher Registration Instructions
   1. You need to be registered as a teacher in order to bookmark Web sites for students to access.
3. Nettrekker Help Documents:
   1. Searching Basics
      1. * Keyword Search
         1. * Search Results
         2. * Refine your Search
      2. Advanced Search
      3. Subject Search
      4. Specialized Searches
         1. Current Events
         2. Famous Person
         3. Image Search
         4. Time Line Search
         5. Standards Search
   2. * Saving Your Search Results with My Portfolio
   3. Additional Features
      1. Read Aloud
      2. Dictionary
      3. Reference Tools

Additional Resources

1. Quick Reference Guide
2. NetTrekker Help Documents
3. Nettrekker Video Tutorials
4. * Westford NetTrekker Parent Letter

“The Clever Boy and the Terrible, Dangerous Animal”

1. The Future of Web Searching?
   1. Google Mobile Ap
   2. Google SMS
2. Research on Children’s Web Searching Skills
   1. NPR Story on Web Searching by Children
      1. We asked what day next year will the vice presidents birthday be on? Well, this was a very interesting question because it takes three different searches to actually find that question, only about 0.5 percent of our kids could actually answer this question. We had one child swear he was going to find the vice presidents birthday next year in the Spongebob Squarepants Web site.
      2. What we saw was there are many times where kids just sort of gave up, even though the information might have been there or they didnt realize that they had just misspelled something or kids say, oh, the information is not there, must not be important.
      3. Google has long known that it can be difficult for users to formulate the right keywords to call up their desired results. But that task can be even more challenging for children, given that they do not always have the right context for thinking about a new subject. One 12-year-old boy searching for information about Costa Rica used the search term “sweaty clothes” because that was what he associated with the jungle.
      4. Future trends in search may also be helpful to children. The move toward voice-activated search like the Google voice search on iPhones and Android phones and audio and video search will prove beneficial to children with limited abilities, experts say.
3. Helping Children Find What They Need on the Internet

Last updated: Jan 24 at 9:22 pm