Child Friendly Search engine

[busby]

I'm Having trouble trying to find a seach engine (images etc) that is totally child Friendly and can be used in a few schools. Trouble is all the ones we have tried have thrown up inapropriate content.

 

what do you guys use ?

[OutToLunch]

I've had a look and never come across one - there's always going to be something that slips through on the basis of a double meaning etc. Combining google + safe search + content filtering proxy is about as good as it gets unless you're willing to build your own portal type site and whitelist everything...

[round2it]

ditto

Combining google + safe search + content filtering proxy is about as good as it gets

Our lea forces safe search for us

 

Oh i have a good search engine for you the "LIBRARY" fantastic off line internet

[mac_shinobi]

microsoft office clipart ?

 

That or build up your own safe collection in an area that denies them deletion of them and they can access images there and they can use the helpdesk to put in a request for adding images unless they have rights to copy images over there.

[enjay]

Picsearch - Image Search for pictures and images is good for pictures. Despite the name, it also has a text search, although this is less good - I searched for "girls" and the first two results were FHM and page3(dot)com!!

 

EduGeek.net is okay, a bit limited and a rather hideous "child-friendly" interface though.

[synaesthesia]

I haven't actually tested it but a couple of my schools exclusively use askkids.com for their pupils, may be worth a look.

[russdev]

Maybe Yahoo Kids

 

Kids Games, Kids Movies, Kids Music, and More - Yahoo! Kids

 

Russ

[elsiegee40]

We're using Google... but I've set SafeSearch on Strict and locked it using a password in the mandatory profile the kids all use.

[CHR1S]

Try one of these -

 

TekMom's Search Tools for Students

Kids' Tools for Searching the Internet

Kid Safe Search Sites

Internet Search Engines for Kids

 

They have some image searches and what not, you may find some to be a bit Americanised but do the job.

[p858snake]

Bing?

 

I know its meant to server all explicit content from explicit..com so that it's easy to block but I don't know how well it works.

[busby]

Thanks guy's i will try the search engines you have suggested, were on mewan and trafford networks and we use cachepilot (no choice in those schools) its tied down quite strict but images from google still come through, teachers decided to ban google for the kids. so im trying to find alternatives.

[busby]

we had to block bing too, getting harder to filter images lol

[Pete10141748]

In my experience, no matter what combination of filters, search engines and proxy settings you use, if you are on the Internet searching for images then sooner or later (probably sooner) you are going to spot something innapropriate, it's borderline unavoidable at this stage

 

We set all the pupil's accounts to use Ask Kids as their homepage (though I admit it's not a nice one to use), and without fail the first thing they all do it use it to search for "Google" *facepalm* but then that's up to them or their teacher to decide, I've set it to a child-friendly site, if they choose to change it that's up to them.

 

Quite often here I get asked beforehand to put together a folder of pictures around a topic and then the pupils can look through that instead of using the Internet. It's a pain, but I'd rather do that and reduce the risk of them spotting something on Google Images that they shouldn't see. As we don't do in-house filtering (all done by the LEA/ISP) at least I don't have any personal responsability towards to the filtering which saves me a headache!

[mossj]

You could be creative and use Google's CSE, and white list sites (and/or force google safe search)....

 

Edit: think I might get creative and knock something up at the weekend...

Edited February 26, 2010 by mossj

[enjay]

if you are on the Internet searching for images then sooner or later (probably sooner) you are going to spot something innapropriate

 

Agreed, partly because there's no accounting for what one person might feel is inappropriate.

 

Quite often here I get asked beforehand to put together a folder of pictures around a topic and then the pupils can look through that instead of using the Internet.

 

An excellent idea (we've done that here before when wanting sanitised pictures of Egyptian mummies for Year 3) except for the fact that you're doing this, and not the class teacher.