Searching and exploring the WWW and all it's resources

When I find a website I like/need I always bookmark it as part of my favorites. Of course, this could have is cons because it is only available on the computer on which it is bookmarked and if something happens to that computer then all the bookmarks are lost. I have somewhat come up with a way to solve this dilemma and bought an external hard drive backup and on that a back up my favorites are saved. I have tried another alternative of saving websites by using Twitter, but found that I wasn’t a fan of twitter so I do not continue to use it.

I always joke in saying that Google is my best friend and to be honest, it is! I Google EVERYTHING! Although I am such a huge fan of using Google I was unaware that there is a difference between using a search engine, such as my wonderful Google, and using a search directory, such as Yahoo. A search engine allows you to type exactly what you are looking for in the search bar and all the websites that contain any or all of the words in you search bar will appear. A search directory is a little more complex and organized in the way that you click on a series of links to get you exactly where you want to go. I still like the idea of a search engine better because I like to just type in the words I am looking for and see what the WWW has to offer. I found it interesting that if you add quotation marks around what you type in the search bar that the engine finds that exact sequence of words.

The amount of websites available for our use today is infinite, but there are a few websites that I really like for K-12 educators. Of course, my number one favorite is Google for Educators. I really like Google for Educators because it offers a large variety of teacher resources. Ask for Kids is also a personal favorite. Although I am considered an adult I still like to ask a lot of questions, and I find that this website is excellent for answering some of the question kids and adult have. Lastly, I like Sites of Teachers because like Google for Educators it offers a wide variety of resources. This site also has the sites listed in order of popularity so you can see which sites are used more often by educators like yourself.

The FLDOE is a site that I am familiar with but definitely not an expert on. I really enjoyed exploring the site and seeing some of the information and resources that I had not discovered yet. One thing I found about the FLDOE site is that there is a link for colleges, but I was only seeing that they had the community colleges listed. I am not sure of I just didn’t see a link for the other universities, but I found that to be a little odd. After reviewing the FLDOE site I went to look at a few other states. The first state I looked at was New York because I love NYC and know that teaching there would be a whole different world than here in Florida. As I looked at their site they had a lot of the same information as FL, but I found FL’s site to contain more information and to be more appealing to the eye. Next, I clicked on the Rhode Island site and found the link to be incorrect and it actually takes you to a car insurance site. Looks like the site must’ve changed and the change hasn’t yet been made to the main education site. Finally, I looked at Maryland’s site and found that I liked that site and resources better than New York’s, but I still think Florida is my favorite.

I am currently not teaching so I chose to look at the Orange county website since I live in Orange County to see what they had to offer. I feel like this site has a lot to offer to students, teachers, and parents alike. Of course the usual information such as a school calendar and latest news and information was available, but other resources such as a letter from the superintendant, frequently called number for the parents and homework help available for the students. Moving forward I continued to look at different sites and links that were available on the web. Some of the sites were more user friendly than others, but they all were manageable after a few minutes of playing on them. If you can’t find what you are looking for on the different sites you can always use my plan of execution, Google!