Friday, July 15, 2011

ISTE 2011- A takeaway from a Vendor? Sweet... no... SweetSearch!

When I was at ISTE11 in Philly I did not spend much time in the vendor hall. I never feel comfortable talking to vendors since I have so little clout when it comes to what my district purchases. When I did go into the hall I was specifically looking for World Book to see what their new science module was all about. I was so focused on that mission that I almost missed the biggest library takeaway of them all. Mark Moran of SweetSearch lured me in to his booth with bookmarks, yes that was all it took, paper bookmarks (since I give out more than 400 book marks to students each week of the school year this was quite a prize). Anyway, the bookmarks give students tips for Internet Research. Mark who is the founder and CEO of Dulcinea Media, the parent company of SweetSearch, told me about this free search engine for students. It searches only credible web sites. The search engine part is free but there is so much more and it will have a pay component. I love how well researched this product is and I love that some of it is free in case the other librarians do not agree that this is as great as I think! I also just started following Mark Moran on Twitter. And a SweetSearch search came up with a webinar link that explains more about SweetSearch. The video below is what Mark was offering at ISTE11.



A YouTube search of SweetSearch came up with this tutorial from Anna Laura Brown the SocialNetworkingLibrarian.



What do I think of SweetSearch? I am ready to put the widget on my library home page!

1 comment:

Congerjan said...

I posted the SweetSearch widget on this blog, check it out on the right side and do a test search!