Thursday, July 7, 2011

EBSCO Kids Search and Searchasaurus

Unfortunately, we rarely use our EBSCO resources at our school. I know it can be a great resource for teachers to use. I need to promote it again. I think it is a resource that is time consuming to use.  Users must really plan their search terms well to get relevant results.

I must admit that using Kids Search and Searchasaurus with kids has not been easy or very productive and I have shied away from it. The whole searching by lexiles and having to put these numbers in terms that students can understand makes what looks like a kid friendly user interface more complicated than need be (give us some approximate grade level equivalents as well EBSCO). Kids usually find the search results quite overwhelming and the amount of spurious results quite offputting. I really could use some insights and training on how to make elementary kids successful in using this resource.

1 comment:

  1. I agree - I had a whole big argument with a sales person in Europe over the difficulty in using Searchasaurus with elem. aged students. Bad interface, poor results.

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