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Okay, are you a teacher looking for sound effects to use in multimedia projects for your students but are not sure where to look?  The “Find Sounds” search engine will make your life so much easier. This site offers many different types of audio clips for you to download.  The only problem is that the sound effect that you find may not be copyright-free.  Here is a disclaimer from the Find Sounds site:

“When you perform a search using FindSounds.com or the WebPalette feature of FindSounds Palette, you obtain links to audio files hosted by Web sites throughout the world. The sounds in these audio files may be copyrighted and their use governed by national and international copyright laws. We do not offer advice on the fair use of these files.”

Therefore, teachers and students still need to do some basic research to find out if the sound can be used under fair use laws, but at least they have a starting point now.  Even so, check out Find Sounds and let me know what you think.

Are you looking for an easier way to search, but still want the power of Google?  Check out Soople.com! Soople is an interface that works over top of Google, and allows the average user to search the Internet easily.  You can search for file types, definitions, images, and news by typing keywords into the box.  Soople creates the language and search queries for you. Also, with Soople you can translate websites and find phone numbers or locations.  At the bottom of the site, you can see who is linking to your website by typing in the URL of your personal site. Soople may be an answer for you if searching on Google is not as fast as you’d like it to be.

http://amyboehman.blogspot.com

Quintura Kids is a new search engine that boasts to be the “first visual search engine for the youngest web users”.  They state that they “help to find kid-related information on the web easily and interactively”.  At first glance, I noticed the search engine was colorful and eye-catching.  Users can click on a word from the “cloud” of topics or type in their own word.  What I really liked about Quintura was that the site helps children narrow the number of websites to choose from by clicking on the word clouds that appear.  For example, I typed in the word “Germany” into the field and it returned with 47 hits.  The “cloud” of subtopics revises above the field to reflect my choice of Germany.  Now there are subtopics I can choose that range from pictures to maps to history to famous Germans.  If I click on “pictures”, the pages are narrowed to 24 hits.  Clicking on “Rhine River” lowers that number to 18, and so on.  Children would find this very user friendly when looking for information on the Internet.  The only aspect I didn’t like was that the user had to click “new search” hidden in the upper right hand corner of the web page in order to start again.  Otherwise words and clicks from the “cloud” would be added onto your existing query.  As an educator, I’m not promoting unsupervised surfing on the Internet.  Children need to be supervised and have guidelines when on the Internet.  (See my previous entry on Internet Safety.)

 There is an adult version of this search engine available at quintura.com. It isn’t as colorful, but works the same way as the children’s version. On their home page, they state: “type a query or navigate the cloud; refine your cloud; save it; or share it”.  After the user types in a query, he/she can click to “share” the results which will email the page to friends or to save it for later use.  How cool!