CSEs (better late than never)

Now that I've stopped construction on the Ark, prevented my basement from flooding AND had COX Communications finally restore our cable/internet/phone to working order, I can finally jot down some thoughts and revelations about Google's Custom Search Engines and what a great tool they have already been to both myself and my colleagues. All of the 7th and 8th grade teachers at my school now have gmail account sand have a least been using google docs for a few weeks now, so I decided to give them a brief rundown about Google's CSE's at our team meeting on tuesday of last week. They were all so excited that all but the math teacher decided to use a CSE engine with the 7th and 8th graders as a whole class the next time they went to the computer lab. I asked both the science and social studies teacher why they were so excited about building CSEs, and both responses had to do with having "control of the content that students will be directed to on the web."

I also believe that the "control" aspect of CSEs is what makes them such a great educational tool. Not just for the teacher, but for the student as well. Using a CSE for the webquest that we're building is going to streamline the project for the student by directing them to the most appropriate information that will help them complete the tasks involved. The same could be said for the science teacher at my school that designed  CSE loaded with all the best middle school-based science fair projects: ideas, suggestions, science curriculum tie-ins and standards. He was able to keep the students from clicking off on tangents and staying in the "realm" that he wanted them in. I liked the way he used the word 'realm' and so did the social studies teacher, so much that he also built a CSE for students to use when they went to choose countries from Latin America that they would research. 

CSEs would also be great for students to use in making up their own webquests for classmates. Once they've been taught how to properly evaluate websites for educational purposes, having the students build their own CSE could be a powerful tool in helping them construct their own realms of knowledge based on what they found most interesting in social studies, science, or language arts class.