As educators we are faced with the challenge of teaching students to use the Internet effectively. With so much information available, it’s important to bring relevant and reliable resources into the classroom and also to teach our students how to conduct a search. Google offers a cool tool to assist with both tasks.

The Goggle Custom Search Tool allows you to easily build your own search engine customized with content for your grade level or for a particular unit of study. The tool helps you teach students to search for information, but it limits the search to websites you have chosen as appropriate. It can be embed into your own blog, wiki, or site.

Do teach students that the customized search tool only searches websites you have identified, and consider allowing them to build a custom search of their own when teaching them how to evaluate reliable websites.

Try this example, created for finding information about Regions of the United States.

http://www.google.com/jsapi
google.load(‘search’, ‘1’, {language : ‘en’, style : google.loader.themes.BUBBLEGUM}); google.setOnLoadCallback(function() { var customSearchControl = new google.search.CustomSearchControl(‘012644402163828262741:0kea2ez-3yw’); customSearchControl.setResultSetSize(google.search.Search.FILTERED_CSE_RESULTSET); customSearchControl.draw(‘cse’); }, true);
Go to Google Custom Search