NetTrekker offers kid friendly Internet search

By AMY SATTERWHITE / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

Warren County Schools is using an Internet search engine called netTrekker as a tool for learning. Parents wishing to use the search engine may visit www.nettrekker.com and follow the links for parents.

If you’ve ever “Googled” anyone or anything, then you know the power of the Internet. Local educators know the power of the Internet too, and are tapping into it for practical application in area classrooms.

Introduced about a year ago, an educator-friendly Internet search engine called netTrekker is being used in Warren County schools. It is designed to give students, teachers and even parents the ability to search the Internet for specific educational material that can enhance learning experiences.

The main difference between common search engines like Google or Yahoo and netTrekker is the contents of the latter have been previously screened by educators, Warren County Schools’ Director of Technology Katrina Haley said, noting she has been working for the past year to encourage community use of the search engine, which contains a wealth of information already aligned to state curriculum standards.

The search engine was also said to provide access to more than 180,000 educationally relevant Web sites for grades kindergarten through 12. For example, a teacher who would like to give students extra help on addition may direct students to an online lesson without having to first sift through massive amounts of information. Students can also research a variety of topics on their own.

“It is a search engine that allows you to search for sites that have already been evaluated by educators, so you’re not searching through a bunch of information that is irrelevant to what you’re trying to get resources for,” Haley said. “It’s really a great tool to use.”

And while students and staff at Morrison School recently won a competition where they logged on to netTrekker the most out of all participating schools located throughout Middle Tennessee, including Warren County, Haley believes community use could be more widespread.

“It’s just been hard to get the community to start using it, as well as the teachers, but anybody who has a child who is a student within our school system can use it at home,” she said.

Excited about Morrison’s regional accomplishment, Morrison computer lab teacher Gail Curtis said netTrekker has been a good tool to use in conjunction with classroom lessons and even practicing for TCAP testing. For their efforts during the contest, the school won a digital camera that Curtis said will be used in classroom applications.

Additional benefits of using netTrekker were said to be increased teacher productivity, increased task time and even a reassurance the information contained on netTrekker is true, which is a major benefit to students navigating what can be an otherwise misleading World Wide Web.

“You know they’re going to a site that is a reputable site and knowledgeable and not a resource that has things that may not even be true, even within that site,” Haley added of netTrekker.

Haley hopes more people will start to realize the benefits of the search engine.

“I think it’s just the fact they just don’t know about it yet,” she said of relative lack of widespread use so far. “Some schools had promoted more than others, so therefore, more people know more about it than others.”