This is a Google Custom Search Engine, built by the Wells Elementary Community to provide a safe search engine for students.

Searching on the Internet is a skill that all students will eventually need. Students will need to be able to find information relevant to their research and evaluate that information for quality, accuracy, and usefulness.

When surveyed, 57% of WES 3rd and 4th graders reported that they conduct searches on the Internet at home already. More than half of those conduct searches without an adult present. 100% of the searches take place on Google.

Google is clearly one of the dominant search engines to prepare our students for (I'm sure Google's going to be around for a while), but it is limited in its effectiveness for teaching students at the elementary level:

• there is always the danger of inappropriate links coming up in the results
• certain sites make it to the top of the list due to certain "manipulations" that take advantage of Google's algorithms, and more appropriate and relevant links may be buried deeper in the results
• there are way too many results for students who are learning to discern good resources versus lousy resources to effectively use Google's powerful engine (several million results for a search, for instance, can be a bit overwhelming)

Google allows users to create Custom Google Search Engines that can solve these issues. The search engine above has been focused (or restricted) to sites identified by the community to best serve our students, thus reducing search-result overload and helping to ensure that search results are safe, useful, and relevant.

Imagine this: instead of a teacher asking students to search for information for an Ocean Research project using the entire scope of the World Wide Web, they can help focus the students' research by putting in sites that they want them to visit ---sites that are safe and relevant. The teacher does this by entering the approved sites into the Custom Search Engine.

The list of sites included in the search engine will be frequently updated here: WES Search Sites.

This Custom Search Engine is only as good as the links put into it. Building a Custom Search Engine is best accomplished through collaboration and care of the invested community. If you have sites that you think would be important to add to the engine, or if you find sites that are no longer working or relevant, please email:

rsprankle [at] wocsd [dot] com

You might want to Bookmark this page at home and direct your student to use this engine when searching the Internet.

Thank you for helping to create a safe and useful Search Engine for the WES community!