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Search Engine for students. Brings up hits from 35,000 web sites that have been approved by a staff of teachers, librarians, and research experts.

Site for students with sites approved by educators.

Lots of great web links as you go deeper into specific areas.

Search Credible is a search service that allows you to access 26 different search engines from one location. Included in the list of search engines Search Credible searches are Wolfram Alpha, EBSCO, ERIC, and the usual suspects such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. To use Search Credible just enter your search term(s) then click on the search engine of your choice. Thanks to Richard Byrne.

Wolfram/Alpha is to be the first web-based tool that can find answers to all systematic knowledge in the world. For educators, this "computational iknowledge engine" can find objective and fact-based answers for a variety of subject areas. Type in "Newton's Law," for example, and the formula for force is explained. Enter in an equation for a line, and the site plots the line on a graph. Ask "What is the GDP of the United States and Canada?" and a chart depicts a side-byside comparison of the nations' economic data.

This site can be used for information gathering. Teachers can design instructional activities to help students learn how to use their cell phones as an anytime, anywhere research and information-gathering device. For example, while on a trip to historical Williamsburg, Virginia, a teacher tells his class to send any questions that occur to them to the free information site ChaCha. One student wonders why a certain building was constructed in such an odd way. No tour guides are around to help, so he calls 1-800-chacha, asks his question, and gets a text-message answer back in minutes.

Middlespot is an innovative web site for social bookmarking that allows users to collect sites in a visual way. This would be a great tool for teachers to organize content appropriate web sites and then share them with their students.

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Article on 10 steps to a better web research.