nettrekker.

nettrekker bills itself as the #1 educational search tool in schools. essentially, nettrekker filters search results to only websites it deems educational & safe. in my experience, one of the skills students consistently lack is the ability to effectively search the internet for relevant information. a lot of adults have problems sifting through the internet to find answers, most students are even more clueless. a past student, while creating a presentation on the catholic church in the middle ages, simply entered "catholic church," & was confused why the majority of websites listed were for specific churches & lacked any information on the catholic church during the middle ages. this is just one example of a process that replicates itself in every classroom attempting internet research. nettrekker is here to help, by displaying only educational websites that are kid-friendly.

 

what is nettrekker?

nettrekker is a filtered search engine. it points students to resources that are classroom-approrpriate. this service also comes at a cost. nettrekker costs $5 a month or $50 a year for a home license. institutional sales go directly through nettrekker. at this time, every public school in pennsylvania has access to nettrekker as part of the cff program. you can obtain your school's log-in information by contacting your intermediate unit or nettrekker.

when performing searches on nettrekker, you have access to over 300,000 approved sources. results can be filtered through grade level, subject, or keyword. the my portfolio feature allows the user to bookmark content they find especially useful. my portfolio contents can be shared with other teachers or students. nettrekker also has several manipulatives available for interactive whiteboards on a variety of topics. ell/esl students are provided with additional help through text-to-speech support, dictionary access, & customized content. nettrekker also integrates with several other classroom technologies, including scantron, examview, blackboard, and echalk.

final verdict:

nettrekker is a viable resource for elementary to middle school classrooms. it does what it claims to do: make internet searches easy & safe. i would hesitate to use nettrekker in a high school classroom, because at some point the training wheels need to come off the bike. sending a student to college without ever using google for research could prove disastrous. as far as internet safety, most schools already have effective firewalls installed. also, nettrekker costs money. i would not recommend the use of nettrekker to my teachers. i instead would work with students on developing effective search skills that will benefit students for life.