Research Resources

There are plenty of excellent online research resources, guides, and tutorials on the Web, and in print. Here are a select few that you may want to consider before starting your next project.

NoodleTools

Noodle Tools is a suite of interactive tools designed to aid students and professionals with online research. Among its free tools are “NoodleQuest,” designed to develop the optimum Web-based search strategy for your research topic. Fill in the short form and NoodleTools will suggest a research direction. Furthermore, “Choose the Best Search” provides helpful search strategies based on an analysis of your topic. In table format, it provides concise but detailed information literacy search strategies. Other free tools include “NoodleBib Starter,” a free and simplified MLA version for students grades 1-5, ESL, and “NoodleLinks,” a way to browse bibliographies written by researchers around the world on hundreds of topics.

Refseek

Refseek is an academic search engine that only delivers reference materials as search results. It cuts down on the overload of non-academic search results for students by eliminating sponsored links and most commercial web sites.

Wolfram Alpha

WolframAlpha is a unique, computational search engine. The Search results are data driven, which makes it especially useful for searching socioeconomic data, geographic and demographic data, economic data, scientific data, mathematical computations, and other topics.

SweetSearch

SweetSearch is a search engine for students. It searches far fewer web sites than Google, but only lists websites that have been reviewed by its team of educators. It also provides social media tools that enable you to send your results to others.

Internet Archive: Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine provides free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public to billions of web pages stored in the Internet Archive’s web archive. It is a great tool for seeing what web pages contained months, or years ago. Collections include Web, Moving Images, Texts, Audio, and Software.

Center for History and New Media

The Center for History and New Media resources are designed to benefit professional historians, high school teachers, and students of history.

TrackStar

TrackStar is a starting point for online lessons and activities for multiple disciplines. Simply collect websites, enter them into TrackStar, add annotations for your students, and you have an interactive, online lesson called a “Track.” Create your own Track or use one of the hundreds of thousands already made by other educators. Search the database by subject, grade, or theme and standard for a quick and easy activity.

Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators: USING PRIMARY SOURCE MATERIALS IN THE CLASSROOM

Kathy Schrock, known as the creator of The Schrock Guide, is a highly acclaimed educational technology guru. Her articles, web sites, and books have helped countless teachers, students, and educators. This particular section of her website is extremely helpful for finding research resources.

Jog the Web

Jog the Web is a web-based tool that allows anyone to create a synchronous guide to a series of web sites. Its a step-by-step approach to taking viewers through web sites, allowing the author to annotate and ask guiding questions for each page.

LiveBinders

LiveBinders is like having a 3-ring binder for all of your cloud documents, web links, pdfs and files for supporting a research project. Teachers and students can organize binders with tabs and and sub-tabs so that everything you need on that topic is in one place. These LiveBinders can be kept private or be shared.

Public Domain Images 

To help you avoid infringing on copyright protection, we have prepared an extensive list of Internet sources for public domain images, with an eye towards the humanities. Please check individual images you find at these sites to determine if there are any restrictions on usage.

Search and Evaluate Web Sites

For more ideas, we have compiled a table of search engines and tools to help you and your students to better search the web.




Share this:

AI Essential Course Promo Image

AI ESSENTIALS:

10-Week Accelerator Course for Educators

Join us for ten 90-minute virtual sessions over ten weeks that will each dive into specific aspects of AI in education!