A More Accessible Internet

As everyone knows, the Internet is a great resource for finding a ton of information for academic or personal purposes. But such a great resource has its problems too. Use a search engine and what gets returned? A fire hose blast of information comes your way. And information you do find can be too difficult for some of us to read. There are no controls on reading levels or quality of the information (you know, like books have!).

So this week, I thought I would share some tools for helping to tame information overload and help make web content more accessible.

Sound Gecko
If a website is too difficult to read, or if you just don't have time, there are plenty of sites that will read you the content of a site, but this one is pretty user friendly. Sign up for a Sound Gecko account with your e-mail address. Then copy and paste the URL of a page you want read out loud into your account. You will get a link in your e-mail to an mp3 file that has an audio version of the text. You can also get extensions for your web browser or a mobile app to use with the account so you can skip the whole copying and pasting thing.

Readibility
Most websites have too much clutter that gets in your way (e.g. ads), or a complicated layout or small or unreadable font or other issue. Readibility does two things well. So you find a website you like. You don't have time to read it now and it is to hard to read for one of the reasons mentioned above. Just click the readability bookmarklet that you put in your favorites bar. Readibility reformats the page with a white background, and readable black type and not ads or other clutter..You can adjust the layout, font properties and background. Even better, if you don't have time to read it now, you can click the read it later button and store it in your Readibility account and access it later.

Wiki Summarizer
Wikipedia articles are great timesaver if you want a quick overview of a topic. But if your are not a great reader, the amount of text can be overwhelming and out of your reach.  Instead, type your keywords into Wiki Summarizer. The program distills the article into a summary of the main points and gives you several options for presenting the summaries.

Instagrok
Starting a research project can be daunting. You might not know anything about your topic. That is where Instagrok comes in. If you type your initial topic into the search box and you get a visual breakdown of related keywords on the left. Click on any keywords and get a new set. On the right, results are broken down into categories starting with fast facts about your topic. Use a slider at the top to change the difficulty level of the results  There are a lot of features here, and the interface can be difficult to navigate at first, but this is a powerful tool.

Three New Specialized Search Tools to Check Out

Google is great for doing most searches, but sometimes you need a specialized search tool to get the job done right. Here are three promising and interesting new tools that you might want to try out for yourself. 

Symbolab 
http://symbolab.com/
Symbolab is a search engine that searches for math and science content. Sure, you say, Google does that. But Symbolab searches for equations, formulas and expressions using mathematical symbols and scientific notations. And it can do full text searches as well. In other words, you can look for solutions, exercises and contextual information about a specific formula or you can look up information about, for example, quantum mechanics. Check out their home page for some sample searches.

Kitchen PC
http://www.kitchenpc.com/
KitchenPC is recipe search engine. Yep, there are other specialized tools out there that search for recipes (including Google's recipe search tool). KitchenPC not only searches a bunch of  recipe sites to get the results, but you can also put in ingredients you already have and get matching recipes. Or tell it what ingredients to avoid. Narrow your search using a number of other options, such as skill level, diet, taste and time. Build menus and get a shopping list.

 Art.sy 
http://art.sy/
Ok, you are looking for some art, but you don't quite know who or what to look for. After all, you're not an Art History professor, right? You can search for specific artists, works, movements, techniques, or regions. Or if you don't have something specific in mind, you can use the browse feature. From your search results or when looking at specific works, Art.sy gives you tools and suggestions for narrowing the search or finding related works. They may not have all the works by specific artists, but you can also follow specific artists and get notified when new works are added to their database.

To Google or not to Google: That is the question…

Tuesday’s Tech Tip is about finding information on the web without Googling. Nothing against Google off course but other search engines can do an effective job with added features to suit your learning style. Here are a few you might want to add to your favorites bar.
 

Twurdy.com is a search engine powered by bing that offers reading levels for each of the 10 articles found on a page. The color coding makes it easy to identify basic, intermediate or advanced reading levels at a glance and the corresponding reading level is offered in the summary.

Boolify.org  is an interactive search engine also by bing and a cool way to learn how to use a Boolean search. Just click on a word puzzle piece and drag into the workspace. You can continue to add words, using (and,or & not) puzzle pieces to your searches. By choosing the URL puzzle piece and dragging it onto the workspace you can search specific domains such as .edu for education sites and .gov for government sites. Try it!

Sweet Search.com this search engine is organized by educators, librarians and research experts to return reliable information back to you. Over 100,000 hours of work went into creating Sweet Search by Dulcinea with over 35,000 approved websites. Sweet Search also offers four other search vehicles for biographies, social studies, 2 day (learn something new each day) and 4 me for emerging learners.

Off course you will need to have good search phrases or keywords for best results. Search this blog for more information on creating effective keywords and search phrases.