My role as TL supports the teaching of information literacy. Certainly for my mid and upper primary students, the use of search engines for researching is going to be a common practice. Google has been the go to for most of these researches, but Module 3 on ‘Search Engines’, has reminded me of other search engines which I have used in the past. It made me question why I don’t use these any more.

Previous search engines I have been familiar with are Dogpile and Yahooligans. Sadly, Yahooligans no longer exists however I do have fond memories of it being an accessible site to young students. Instead we are left with Yahoo, a search engine not too disimilar to Google in appearance. An activity in Module 3 encouraged me to compare two search engines and reflect on key differences. A quick comparison of Dogpile and Yahoo demonstrated some the differences that I consider to be important in my potential recommendation and use of search engines in classroom scenarios.

Using the same key search terms for both practices, I found that Dogpile provided a list of ad related coverage, followed by alternate search terms to try, then finally, the required list of potentially useful resources for research purposes. Contrastingly, Yahoo provided the list of search results straight away. It was interesting to note that the results were ultimately the same, but the key difference was in the layout and presentation of results. As a TL, I am drawn to using Yahoo as a suitable and student friendly search engine to avoid unnecessary distractions in learning. When teaching time is limited and precious, it is important that TLs make the most of the best and most relevant resources for our student engagement, understanding and learning.