|
The K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine
02/05/2008 06:36 PM
|
|
Well, we are cooking with steam!
|
Hello all,
We are finally getting caught up around here. The Edusafe.us web site is finally approaching a state where I can call it done. Now that does not mean that it won't see some changes, but it does mean that all the major stuff is about done.
Some news. First, the K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine: My original intent was to make this the primary feature of this site, but because so many people seem to prefer just a standard search engine that is "safe", the original concept has been relegated to an afterthought at this point. It is still available at http://www.edusafe.us/search and I will add sites to it if you send them to me, but as far as active development, well that is finished.
Because of some problems I was having, I had to switch to Google's API to deliver search results. Doing so as made it impossible to integrate it with the toolbars or to even make a gadget that you can put on your web page. That and the fact that so few are using it, as they seem to prefer the whole web safe search, means that if you want to search only educationally relevant web sites, you will have to go to the page directly and search from there.
Now, the Whole Web Safe Search Engine is another matter. It seems that people really like this search engine and are using it heavily. It is a Standard Web Search Engine, set to a family freindly safe searches and is backed up by keyword blocking. If you discover a keyword or phrase that delivers inappropriate search results, please e-mail me and I will add that keyword to the ban list.
Also, a web gadget has been added to the site so that you can search the Whole Web Safe Search Engine directly from your site. You can find it in the FAQs or the "add safe search" pages. It will also be added to the toolbars soon. If you have already downloaded a toolbar, it will automatically update when I have the changes uploaded.
Well, that's just about it. Have a great day!
Wayne
|
01/30/2008 07:22 PM
|
|
Time to face the strange changes...
|
Hello all,
Starting today, and over the next couple of days, I will be migrating the Edusafe.us Whole Web Safe Search page to a new search provider. Please forgive any interruptions that may occur.
The biggest impact that this change will have is for those of you who have downloaded the edusafe toolbars or installed the search widgets on your own sites. You will find that when the change takes place, search requests from those items will redirect to the new site, where you will have to perform the search again. Updated widgets and toolbars will be made available as soon as I can get to it.
The new whole web safe search engine is set to safe search, but I have added an additional level of control that was not available before. Keyword blocking. This powerful feature gives me the ability to block search requests based on the search term entered into the form. For instance, if the word "porn" is a blocked keyword (which it is), and someone types it into the search form, it is automatically ignored. So if someone typed "wild porn" into the search form, only the word "wild" is searched! Cool right?!
Now, I have a lot of keywords blocked, but if you discover a keyword or keyphrase that you think needs to be added to the list, please go to my contact page and e-mail. I'll evaluate the impact and add it to the list if it makes sense to do so.
Well, that's enough for now.. Please note that parts of the edusafe.us web site will not reflect the changes and will have old information for a while. But we are working as fast as we can!
As for the K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine, it will remain the same for a little while, but I may be changing the implementation a bit, soon. It seems that most of you prefer the "Whole Web" search as opposed to the more restirctive 'Educational sites only" search engine, anyways, so I'm not in a big hurry..
Thanks,
Wayne
|
01/18/2008 07:52 PM
|
|
Google, Ohhh, Google... why art thou such a pain in my behind...
|
Hello all..
Many of you may have noticed that the edusafe.us K-12 and GSS search engines were down this morning. I'm not going to get into any great amount of detail, but it appears that Google is not liking the success that http://www.edusafe.us is having and cut me off from a portion of the google site, which caused the edusafe site to stop delivering search results for some time.
So, anyways the site is back up and working again, but I am planning some changes. I had not anticipated these problems with Google and am as yet unsure what direction today's events are going to take me. Regardless of what I decide, please be aware that my mission to provide teachers and students with a Good SAFE SEARCH site remains my top priority. I will likely continue to use Google's safe search technology for some time unless I can find an alternative that meets or exceeds my expectations in this area. But please expect some changes to the site in the coming weeks. For instance, it is likely that the K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine will be merged with the GSS Search Engine. This is because my log data indicates that teachers and students prefer the GSS site. It was my hope that the K-12 search would be more popular as it focused specifically upon educational sites.
I have engaged Google to see if we can permanently resolve the problem that shut down the edusafe search sites today, but Google is hard to interact with, so I'll just have to wait and see if they even get back to me. The edusafe.us search pages should continue to work with it's current configuration, but expect some changes in the coming weeks.
Thank you,
Wayne Campbell
|
01/03/2008 02:40 PM
|
|
Top Sites for Teachers - New companion site for edusafe.us
|
It's Here! We at edusafe have launched a new companion site to edusafe.us. It is the Top Sites for Teachers website and it can be found HERE.
If you have a education or professional development based web site, please feel free to add it to our page. This is a free promotion opportunity for you.
About Sites For Teachers
Sitesforteachers.net is a companion site to http://www.edusafe.us. While the edusafe.us site is dedicated to creating a safe web searching environment for students and teachers, the sites for teachers web site is dedicated to providing quick access to the best teacher resources on the web, based on content and competition. If you are a webmaster and your site has high quality teacher resources like lesson plans, handouts, online teaching tools, quizzes and tests, pintables, reading lessons, math lessons, social studies lessons, geography lessons, or other high quality teacher resources you are encouraged to add your site.
|
12/31/2007 07:15 PM
|
|
The K-12 Teacher - Students Toolbars have arrived!
|
The Edusafe toolbars have arrived! The Edusafe toolbars are now available for download from our download page here. Please feel free to download either of the two toolbars as that will make searching the K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine much easier. You won't even have to come to this site, you will be able to search directly from the browser. Go over to the Toolbar page for information about the features of the toolbars. They are free and easy to install, so help yourself!
|
12/31/2007 07:11 PM
|
|
Coming soon: the K-12 toolbar
|
I am in the process of developing the K-12 browser toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox. This toolbar will be an invaluable tool for teachers and students as it will eliminate the need to access the K-12 Teacher - Student Search Engine on the web site. Searches will be able to be conducted directly from your browsers. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
I plan on preloading the toolbar with dozens of sites that YOU find the most useful. To suggest a site to be added to the toolbar, please e-mail me VIA the contact page at http://www.edusafe.us.
Other handy functions of the toolbar will include:
Zoom in/out - the ability to zoom the page you are looking at with just a click.. This is especially handy for vision impaired students.
RSS Reader - Pull RSS data from any RSS enabled web site. If your school district has a news page, it is most likely RSS enabled. You will be able to pull the news directly from your schools RSS feeds and any other RSS sources as well, and they will be displayed directly in the toolbar.
And much more.. But I promise not to make it overwhelming. It will just be a good tool to simplify your life..
|
12/31/2007 06:49 PM
|
|
Research Sites Needed!
|
Research Sites Needed!
The K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine needs your help!
Please consider submitting sites to the project. Sites that you would normally encourage your students to use when researching for writing assignments, are needed specifically, on numerous subjects. Your help is greatly appreciated. This project will only succeed with the willing participation of educators like you.
|
12/31/2007 06:41 PM
|
|
The Edusafe Project - K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine
|
Please forward this to all the US K-12 educators, teachers, administrators and tech coordinators that you know..
Hello All,The K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine is now online and ready to use and accepting contributors! Here are the details: This search engine is for K-12 educators and students. It's purpose is to create a safe search engine that provides relevant search results for all K-12 teachers and students. This search engine only contains sites submitted by our contributors and our contributors are comprised only of K-12 Teachers, Administrators and the occasional Tech Guy (like me). By using this search engine you receive only HIGH QUALITY search results, and not a bunch of junk that needs to be sifted through. Have you ever had a student use a unreliable source from a web page that they found online? I hear about this all the time and it is just one of the reasons I started this project. The K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine provides search results from several thousand educational, school district and State specific web pages and it is growing more every day!
Please consider contributing to this project. It's easy to do.. Just go HERE - http://www.edusafe.us and click on the "Submit Sites" link, and follow the directions. It's just a simple matter of sending me an e-mail with the sites you want added to the search engine.
If you contribute to this project, please only add sites that have a valid educational or professional development use. Please also submit sites that are specifically relevant to education in your state. Your states DOE is a good example, but specific school district web sites are acceptable as well.
-----------------------------------------
So, I am contacting you because I need your help in 3 ways. First and foremost, I need teachers to contribute to the project, by submitting high quality educational sites to the search engine. If nothing else, It would be helpful if you submitted the sites that you yourself or your students use in your classroom. Any site that teachers, administrators, students use in their everyday educational life should be submitted. Everything from Professional Development sites to sites that teach the ABC's are acceptable.Second, It would be helpful, if you would forward this e-mail to teachers that you know in other school districts. The more people that participate the more valuable this Search Engine becomes..Third, USE IT! The K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine has not been around that long, but it already contains thousands educational web pages. The more we use it and the more you contribute to it, the better and more relevant it will become! Just go to http://www.edusafe.us!
Thank you,
Wayne Campbell
(about me: I am the network admin for USD 447 and all around tech guy. This project is just too big to try to accomplish for my school alone, so I decided to make it a personal project for all K-12 teachers and students. I hope you find it worth while!)
|
|
