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"The Top 5 Safe Search Engines for Kids"

"It's all over the news: STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education ranks among the country's most pressing needs. Countless news stories talk about the renewed national concern with educating students in the STEM fields, and policy initiatives such as Common Core push forward with new attempts to fill that gap. But just what is causing this emphasis? And what can be done to solve the problem?"

"Try Engineering is a site that hosts lesson plans and games designed to get students interested in engineering. The lesson plans, more than 100 of them, are arranged according age and engineering topic. The lesson plans can be downloaded as PDFs. The games section of Try Engineering features 36 online games. Some of the games were developed specifically for Try Engineering while others are hosted on other educational sites like those of NASA and PBS. Like the lesson plans, the games collection cover a variety of topics including solar energy, space science, and bio-engineering. The games section of Try Engineering also includes links to a dozen iPad apps that students can use to learn about engineering and programming."

"Eighth-grader Quin uses his passion for electronics to teach fellow students about 3D printing, arduinos, and other hands-on lessons in STEM skills."

"Sixth-grader Quin uses his passion for electronics to teach fellow students about 3D printing, arduinos, and other hands-on lessons in STEM skills. "

"Text Engine was developed to offer cell phone users a means to search the web using their text messaging service. This is great news for educators and students in low-income and rural communities.   And that's a good thing, because while smartphones are popular, there is still a great need for text-only services in low-income and rural districts. There is also a need in districts like NYC that empower students to bring their own devices to school, but don't have the means to enable students to connect to the internet.  "

"Whether you are looking for resources on integrating science, technology, engineering, and math or on infusing the arts to transform STEM into STEAM, this curated compilation will help you strategize around different approaches to integrated studies."

"The YMCA's Camp Combe is one of the most popular and best-known sleepaway camps in the New York Area. Serving over five hundred children a day during the summer months, the facility keeps its guests both busy and entertained with a whole host of activities including swimming, archery, high rope courses, nature walks, and...Minecraft? No, I'm not kidding. An hour outside of New York City, New York, a group of third-to-fifth graders this week dove into the camp's first ever Minecraft session. Of course, as creatively-oriented as the base game is, it doesn't really teach kids all that much as far as practical knowledge is concerned. That's why Camp Combe is using an educational variant of the title: MinecraftEdu. Deveoped by TeacherGaming, MinecraftEdu is a modified version of the base game whose sole purpose is to get its players interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. After logging in to MinecraftEdu, players are first taught the basics of the vanilla Minecraft experience - logging into a server, controlling their avatars, manipulating the environment, acceptable behaviors...you get the idea. Once they've been schooled in how to play, they're then given an objective; this task could be anything from building a bridge to creating a functional particle accelerator."

Knowing where to look is an essential aspect of information fluency.  Google, Yahoo, Bing are just the top of the pyramid.  Here's a list of search engines.  How many have you even heard of, let alone used?

"Welcome teachers, librarians, homeschoolers and nonfiction writers! This blog offers innovative resources for teaching science and tips for writing nonfiction."