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Username: besbulldogs Password: Use the one your teacher gave you, or use the name of our parent organization. All lower case letters.
Want to know more about netTrekker--Read below. netTrekker is the number one academic search engine for students and teachers. Picture Google(tm) for schools, the key difference being each website in netTrekker has been reviewed by an educator for safe, student appropriate content. Developed for educators by educators, netTrekker provides teachers, students and librarians with safe, reliable access to more than 180,000 educator-selected websites that have been aligned with How is netTrekker different than other search engines? Created by the educators for the educators! Other search engines use technological tools that scan the entire web for whatever keyword is placed in them. netTrekker uses only their database of over 180,000 reviewed “curriculum based” websites to provide students and teachers quality results. This provides a “focused” and safe search for students. netTrekker is easy to use, organized, and it will save educators/students/parents time. Subscribing to netTrekker allows schools to safely implement Internet technology into the classroom and eliminates the frustration commonly caused by or associated with the other search engines. First log into and use your username and password. KEYWORD SEARCH First feature of netTrekker is doing a keyword search. Ninety percent of searching with in netTrekker is keyword search. This type of searching is very familiar to the teacher and student because it is very Google like. Enter in ecosystem in to keyword field and hit the GO button. Point out the number of search results 310 compared to GOOGLE which has 99,900,000. All the search results have been reviewed by teachers and librarians for their academic relevancy and are aligned with Next point out that each search results has a brief description of the website and the teacher evaluator can be found by clicking on their name. Up pops that evaluators back ground and experience. Then click on the first search result. UIE: Natural Resources, Environment, and Ecosystem. Next click the X box and that will close the window and you will be back into your search results. STATE STANDARD ALLIGNMENT TO KEYWORD SEARCH Above the first search result there are three blue buttons. Click on State Standards This will pull up the word ecosystem to the To find a lesson plan that is aligned to Performance descriptor 4 click on the Lesson Plans tab. That will sort those twenty five search results down to six website that has a lesson plan. STATE STANDARD SEARCH (If you have enough time) Go to the top of the page and click the State Standard button. This will pull of the three If you do this I recommend using the word Declaration of Independence. READABILITY At the top of page click on the Middle School Tab. In the keyword box type Stars and click search. You will receive 677 search results. We are going now to find web results based on individual student reading levels. If you look at our readability grid it is laid out 1 to 5. I like to think of this as easy reading level to more challenging reading levels. Click on the number 2. This will sort the 677 search results to 72. Open the first website Star Child Stars. This website is on a reading grade level of 4th – 6th grade. If you close the window and go back to your search results you can learn more about the readability levels by click the purple more button which is underneath the description of the website. Here you will be able to see the different reading index rankings that we are using to measure websites. Next click on the readability level 5. You will have 138 web results. Click on the first website READ ALOUD At the top of the page click “OPEN Read Aloud”. Highlight the passage you would like read aloud. The passage will be read. DICTIONARY HOT KEY Click on the X to close out the window on IMAGE SEARCH We have received a lot of feedback from schools who have turned off Google Images in their schools because of the inappropriate pictures that have been able to get through their schools filters. We have taken the 180,000 websites in netTrekker that have been reviewed by educators and taken the images from them to create a safe and focused image search. Go to the top of the page and click on the Elementary School tab. Enter in frogs in the keyword box and click on the image link. This will pull up copy write free images on frogs. You can click on one of the images and it will take you to the website were the image resides. ENGLISH LEARNERS ESL CHANNEL We have dedicated an entire section on ESL students. Click on the Middle school tab at the tab. Next click on the English Learners button. You will see that in this section you can do a key word search or search by curriculum. We have two new sections ELL Skill Development and the Multicultural Pavilion. With in the ELL Skill Development section we are providing web resources that will help build reading and writing, listening and speaking skills. Multicultural Pavilion section covers cultures, ethnic identity and assimilation into Do a key word search on Trees. You should notice that you have 595 search results. Now look at the tabs. We are able to refine our search on trees by finding websites that have Pictures, websites that are multilingual, websites that have Spanish in them, websites that have a speaking listening component or websites with learning games. Feedback from teachers have been if we can provide these types of resources the more likely an ESL student will be able to over come the language barrier. Click on the Speaking/Listening tab. This will sort the 580 search results to 42. Click on the first website: Exploring the Secret Lives of Trees. Here is an example on how to find a bilingual website that has a Speaking/Listening component. Click on the High School Button at the top of page. Under the Social Studies curriculum click on U.S. History link. To the right of the link A New Nation click on the icon to pull up the timeline. CROSS CURRICULUM SEARCH Go to the Elementary section of netTrekker d.i. At the bottom of the page there is a Theme Search / Cross Curriculum search. The feedback we have received from elementary teachers is that when they teach a subject matter they need to teach it cross curricular. So we have developed a way to search cross curricular. Type in pumpkins and hit the search button. You should see 2 search results in Science, 13 in Social Studies, 13 Language Arts and 2 in Mathematics. Click on Mathematics. Click on the first search result Chateau Meddybemps SAVE SEARCHES USING TABS Stay within the elementary section of netTrekker d.i. Do a key word search on counting. You will receive 464 search results. Click on the Learning Games tab. That will sort the 464 search results to 216. Click on the fourth search result ABC: Counting Peacock. You will see a peacock walking across the screen. One the left hand side click on game 1. You will be asked to count sheep in to a paddock. I like showing this example as a way to use technology to reinforce concepts like counting. It also builds hand eye coordination. Click out of the website and you will be back in netTrekker d.i. Next click on the Save Search button at the top of the first search result. This will allow you to save the first 25 search results. K-2 teachers instead of letting there students search the internet will direct the student in to these saved searches to play counting games. FAMOUS PERSON SERACH From the feedback that we received from librarians and teachers is when a student is assigned research 80% percent of the time it is on a famous person. Click the High School Tab. On the left hand side of the page locate the Features box. Click on Famous Person link. Here a student can enter in a name of a famous person or check the boxes to match criteria of the person. Time Period check 19th and 20th century. Occupation/Profession check athletes. Ethnic/Cultural Heritage select African American. Next click the search button at the top. You will receive search results based on the criteria you have chosen. You can click on the persons name to get search results or you could click on the box to the right of the person’s name to get a time line of that person’s life span. REFERENCE SECTION The reference section link can be found in the Features box with in the High, Middle or Elementary school sections. The reference section was designed as a resource for parents who are trying to help their child with homework assignments. The help section was designed to help with implementation of netTrekker. The help section can be found with in the My Tools section. Click on the Help link. Then click on Browse netTrekker help. Here you will find resources for: netTrekker d.i. Basics, Search with netTrekker d.i., netTrekker d.i. tools, Customer resources, Implementation Items and Teacher /Classroom Guides.
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