Searching Safely on the Internet
The services below are designed primarily to serve the needs of children, either in their focus, or by filtering out sites that some parents and teachers might find inappropriate for kids. These usually include sites that deal with explicit sexual matters, pornography, violence, hate speech, gambling and drug use.
Alberta Education Resources
Online Reference Centre
http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/inorc/index.html
Online reference resources that have been licensed by Alberta Education. If you are accessing this site from a computer connected to the CBE network you will not need to enter a username and password. For home access please see your school librarian or administration for the username and password.
Children's Guides & Directories
The kid-safe directories below use human beings to filter out sites that might be considered objectionable for viewing by children.
Calgary Board of Education Online Library
http://www.cbe.ab.ca/curriculum/libraries/default.asp
CBE-approved websites
Calgary Public Library
http://www.calgarypubliclibrary.com/kids/links/library.htm
Links to websites organized by topic
Ask For Kids
Ask for Kids is a unique service where you enter a question, and Ask tries to point you to the right web page that provides an answer. At Ask For Kids, answers have been vetted for appropriateness. Also, if Ask for Kids cannot answer a question, it pulls results from various search engines in its metacrawler mode.
KidsClick!
Backed by librarians, KidsClick lists about 5,000 web sites in various categories.
Yahooligans
Yahoo for kids, designed for ages 7 to 12. Sites are hand-picked to be appropriate for children. Also, unlike normal Yahoo, searches will not bring back matched found by crawling the web, if there is no match from within the Yahooligan listings. This prevents possibly objectionable sites from slipping onto the screen. Additionally, adult-oriented banner advertising will not appear within the service. Yahooligans is the oldest major directory for children, launched in March 1996.
Pics4Learning
Copyright-friendly images for education
Other Kid-Friendly Search Engines/Directories
ALA Great Web Site for Kids
An organized directory of sites selected by members of the American Library Association using rigorous evaluation guidelines to assure high quality content, authority and "strength of character."
Awesome Library
http://www.awesomelibrary.org/
Over 14,000 sites have been classified into a directory, specifically organized for teachers, students and parents. Information can be found by browsing or searching.
Dibdabdoo
Billed as an ad free, non-commercial directory of web sites designed for child-safe searching.
Education World
http://www.education-world.com/
Over 500,000 sites of interest to educators. Browsable or searchable, with the ability to narrow in by appropriate grade level. Launched in spring 1996.
Fact Monster
Reference provider Information Please produces this site which provides facts and information oriented around the needs of children.
Kids Search Tools
http://www.rcls.org/ksearch.htm
Search a variety of kid-safe search engines from a single page.
SearchEdu.com
Index of pages built by crawling education web sites.
Teach-nology.com
Directory of web sites for teachers and educators.
TekMom's Search Tools for Students
All-in-one search page for kid search sites and research resources.
ThinkQuest Library
http://www.thinkquest.org/library/
A free educational resource featuring 5,500+ websites created by students around the world as part of a competition.
Much of this information was extracted from Kids Search Engines on the Search Engine Watch website at http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156191 on October 6th, 2006.