Thing #12, Week 5

Rollyo...

I set up my Rollyo account and tried to create a search roll for teen book reviews. There are several sites that I like to look at when I am working on book orders, such as teenreads.com, the Barnes and Noble teen page, YALSA, and a few others. I put them into a search roll, but it didn't quite work the way I wanted it to when I tested it out. It gave more information than I wanted really. I need to learn how to maybe narrow the search a bit. It definitely needs some tweaking. I found it to be very easy to set up and use though, and wonder how it compares to the Google Custom Search tool. I was really impressed with the Research Rollyo and would like to link that to my school webpage eventually (insert mental reminder here...).

I really like these applications for classes that come in to do research on a specific topic. It's a great way to focus their research to sites that are appproved by myself or their teacher as acceptable sources of information. On the other hand, it's just another way for us to do work for the students by previewing sites for them. We are involved in a huge debate at my site regarding how to teach students to examine websites for credibility. If we set up custom search engines, it will not require the students to use critical thinking skills and information literacy skills to evaluate websites. It is such an important skill for our kids to learn and I hate to send them out in the world lacking in yet another area!

Here's my Rollyo:
http://rollyo.com/norcohslibrary/teen_book_reviews/
If anyone can help me add the searchbar to my blog, I'd be grateful! :o)