Search Engine Guide: July 2011

Sunday 10 July 2011

Educational and Learning Sites

Science and Nature Activities and Experiments for Preschoolers - tons of great ideas to get your young children interested in science and nature. Learning can be fun!

American Museum of Natural History kids site
Education and games about Science and Natural History.

Brain Pop
Animated Science, Health, Technology, Math, Social Studies and English movies, comic strips, activity pages and school homework help for kids.

FunBrain
Online educational games for kids of all ages.

Hearth Song
This site is a great place to find unique and interesting kids toys and activities- that are perfect for birthdays and the Holidays. Price range is mid to high prices.

Kid Info- Directory of Homework and Parent/Teacher Resource Sites
If you are looking for a list of websites for your child or for educational resources for you (a parent) or teacher-check out this top lists of websites for kids and parents.

Lil' Fingers Storybook
Lil' Fingers Storybooks -- Animated Storybooks for toddlers. Animated stories contain large text and big buttons for little fingers!

Art

Art Projects for Kids
Wonderful site to find fun art projects that kids can do easily. Created and maintained by a Kids Art teacher.

National Gallery of Art- kids area
Fun art games and activities to engage your child with art.

PBS Kids- Parents Area- Creativity Exercises
Neat things to do online to help kids be more creative.

Culture

Kids Web Japan
Explore Japan on a kids level and find interesting things to do, see and learn about.

Environment

Environmental Kids Club
All areas about Environment for kids to learn about and play games. Teacher area.

Foreign Language

Chillola.com
A wonderful site for kids learning foreign languages with basic words for Shapes, Colors, Alphabet etc.

General Learning

ABCya
Fun educational learning games and activities for preschool kids.

Alphabet Action
Learning Planet's section for learning the Alphabet. Great preschool online resource.

Education.com
This is a great overall site filled with Educational activities, worksheets and articles on Education.

Sesame Street
Young children can learn about letters, counting, thinking, science, music, art, culture and getting along with others.

History

Ben's Guide to U.S. Government
Fun and educational site for kids to learn about history and the U.S.

Math

Math Playground
Action packed math site for elementary and middle school students featuring math games, math word problems, math worksheets, logic puzzles, and math videos.

PBS Kids Early Math Games
Great information and fun resources to help your child build his/her early math skills at PBS Kids parents section.

Money

US Mint kids section
Games and informative videos about the US Mint and money in the United States.

Music

NY Philharmonic Kids
a wonderful and fun Kids site all about Music. Composing, instruments, games and more.

Play Music
Provides information about musical instruments, composers, and musicians. With Shockwave plug-in, visitors can also play interactive musical games.

San Francisco Synphony Kids Site
Fun and educational kids site all about Music!

21 websites that students like more than you do

So here are 21 websites that are notably much more popular with UK university students than the rest of us.
1. WordReference.com
If you’re looking for free online translation then the chances are you’re a student. This long- established dictionary site registers students at a whopping 834 verses the rest of the online population.
2. Google Scholar UK
You use Google Search to find research papers, theses and articles from professional bodies; students use Google Scholar, “the simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature”. Indexing students at 828 verses the rest.
3. Sidereel
Online TV and film is a common theme in this list. Sidereel shows the heaviest student indexing, at 749 above.
4. Surf the Channel
It’s a little bit werrrr, a little bit weyyyyyy, it’s another place to source questionable links to Family Guy and countless movies. Indexing 677 above.
5. Perez Hilton
Students like their celebrity gossip a bit edgier and more sneering than Heat can afford to muster. Indexing 550 above regular folk.
6. Google Book Search
It’s like the visiting the library, except you won’t get told to ssshhhhhhhhhhh. Millions of free texts to trawl through for references. Indexing 501 above.
7. Super Nova Tube
Another video content site, sensibly operating from an island republic in the Indian Ocean. Advertisers include The Open University. Indexing 483 above.
8. Megavideo
From the same people that provide the popular file-sharing site Megaupload. Indexing 452 above.
9. Dictionary.com
It’s like a dictionary on steroids and it even sounds out words. Students love it, indexing 413 above.
10. TV Guide UK
Perhaps because they don’t buy newspapers much, students find out what’s on TV by going online. Radio Times also features below. 370 above.
11. LiveJournal
Old-skool blogging platform popular with geekier students, but its strong student indexing could be to do with the fact that cult celebrity gossip site Oh No They Didn’t publishes on LiveJournal. 361 above.
12. Guardian Unlimited
Other news sites feature in the top student websites list, but The Guardian is the only one showing heavy student weighting. 327 above.
13. Last FM
Custom internet radio with social networking features – a long time UK favourite with students. 324 above.
14. Channel 4
TV channel with obvious youth appeal, it’s no surprise to find them indexing students at 317 above the rest of the online population.
15. Radio Times
Type ‘tv guide’ in Google and Radio Times comes a poor third, but brand recognition makes it a popular choice with students.
16. BBC iPlayer
Who the heck ‘listens again’ to Chris Moyles, the second most popular radio show on the iPlayer? Could it be a nation of students who slept through the live broadcast?
17. Veoh
More video content, in partnership with several US media companies and studios. 311 above.
18. Wikipedia
Legendary first point of reference for today’s undergraduate. 273 above.
19. The Trainline
Although these days more students have cars than ever before, the majority remain big users of public transport. 264 above.
20. BBC blogs
BBC’s blogs are well represented by its flagship radio shows, as well as its tech output and political editorial. Students index 261 above the rest of the online population.
21. Gmail
There are undoubtedly a higher number of students using Hotmail and Yahoo, but against the rest of the online population Google Mail has the highest percentage proportion, indexing at 254 above.

7 Most Useful Websites for Students

Whether you're having problems figuring out your organic chem homework or you're trying to put together a last-minute bibliography for your term paper, a range of student-focused websites can help you with just about anything you need. The key to getting the most out of these online resources is to know which sites are the most reliable and how they can best be used to your advantage.
Here's our pick of seven websites we think are the most useful for students, plus tips on how they can help you with everything from term papers and missed reading assignments to picking the right professors and finding free money for school.

1) Facebook
Although Facebook can be one of your biggest time-wasters and distractions when you're supposed to be getting work done, it can also be one of your most valuable resources. Most of your classmates will probably have a Facebook account and, like you, will be constantly checking for updates, so anyone you need to connect with about a class you missed or a problem set you're having trouble finishing is usually just a few clicks away.
Just make sure you can use a little self-discipline and don't get caught up in friend updates, relationship status changes, comments, and new photo albums all night, or it won't matter that you found the answers you needed to ace your assignment - it was already due two hours ago.

2) SparkNotes
Nothing beats SparkNotes when you need a quick catch-me-up on the reading you fell asleep in the middle of last night. With a free library of history timelines, philosophy study guides, and literary summaries, essays, and character profiles, SparkNotes has you covered for just about any reading-related jam you find yourself in. Just run a search for the book, play, or short story you were supposed to have read, and a few online recaps later, you should be ready to fake your way through a class discussion on Foucault, Faulkner, or the fall of the Roman Empire.

3) Citation Machine
The last thing you want to do at three in the morning when you've finally put the finishing touches on your term paper is to labor over footnotes and citations, especially when you know your nitpicky prof will dock you for the smallest formatting mistake.
Take the pressure off, and let Citation Machine do the work for you. Citation Machine will automatically generate a Works Cited page for you in your choice of MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian citation styles. Just choose your style, fill out a quick form with all the pertinent citation information (like author, title, and page numbers), then click "Submit." Citation Machine will have your fully formatted Works Cited page ready for you in a matter of seconds.

4) Amazon.com Textbooks
If you're like most students, you've finished out pretty much every semester with an armload of expensive textbooks you'll never crack open again. Instead of letting those pricey investments go to waste, recoup some of your cash by selling your books on Amazon's popular and widely watched marketplace for new and used textbooks. Listing your books for sale is fast and easy, and you could have potential buyers contacting you in no time.

5) RateMyProfessors.com
Enrolling for a new semester of classes can sometimes be like trying to pick out your clothes in the dark: a total guessing game. Which calc teacher gives out the hardest problem sets? Will that history prof saddle you with hundreds of pages of reading every week?
Know what you're getting into before you set your course schedule: At RateMyProfessors.com, students at schools all over the country dish the dirt on their professors, rating them on overall quality, clarity, helpfulness, how tough their classes get, and - because this is always important - how hot they are.

6) NextStudent Scholarship Search Engine
NextStudent's Scholarship Search Engine makes it easy to find thousands of dollars worth of scholarships that you can apply for throughout the year. And unlike other popular online scholarship databases, the NextStudent Scholarship Search Engine doesn't bombard you with annoying pop-up ads or collect a slew of personal information from you to sell to a bunch of advertisers who'll end up flooding your inbox with spam.
There are no fees or charges to search. All you have to do is sign up for a free account, fill in some basic information about yourself, and NextStudent's Scholarship Search Engine becomes your own personal foot soldier, scouring its database of almost 6 million scholarships worth over $16 billion for those awards that relate to your interests and background. You can also narrow your search to scholarships for specific colleges or majors.

7) Wikipedia
While Wikipedia isn't aimed specifically at students, it's tough to think of a website that's done more to ease the pain of paper writing and researching. Bursting at the seams with reader-friendly and mostly heavily sourced material, Wikipedia gives you a quick way to find sources and get the nuts and bolts of almost any topic you need to research - all without making a trek to the library.
Use Wikipedia as a starting point for general research questions or for narrowing your topic, but keep in mind that Wikipedia entries have sometimes been found to contain some big-time inaccuracies and errors, so confirm your Wiki facts with other sources before you write them into your paper. And always check with your profs on what their Wikipedia policy is: Some professors have outlawed Wikipedia citations and could knock you for poor source material.