netTrekker Beats Google Every Time

Melanie Brent, Media Specialist
Christ the King School
Atlanta, Georgia

As opposed to Google, which can give you hundreds of web sites for a keyword search, netTrekker narrows the search to web sites that are appropriate for students.  netTrekker allows the student to search by keyword, subject, theme/cross curricular search, or famous person search according to grade level.  My 2nd grade students found netTrekker especially useful in writing about a famous African-American. 

One of my pet peeves as a Media Specialist is to see students constantly turn to Google as the only place to look for answers.  Unfortunately, the attention span of our students is quite short and requires an immediate response.  The database netTrekker provides results which are appropriate for Elementary, Middle School, and High School research with a reasonable number of choices versus hundreds of choices from Google.

At a GaETC workshop on netTrekker, Jill Allen focused on the many different ways to use netTrekker.  The four major searches include keyword search, subject search, theme/cross curricular search, and famous person search.  Not only helpful to students, netTrekker provides teachers with many useful tools, such as State Standards, lesson plans, learning games and exercises, pictures, maps, and charts.

One excellent feature of netTrekker is help on choosing a research topic.  Through subject search, a student may drill down to see many choices in their subject.  For example, if a student must write a paper on the 1920’s, he can use Social Studies, U.S. History, and then choose the Twenties and the Great Depression.  At that point, the student may choose to focus on societal effects of the depression.

I decided to introduce my 2nd grade students to netTrekker when they were assigned a research paper on a famous African-American.  Some of the children had already made their choice of a famous African-American.  Those students immediately typed the name of their famous person in the box and chose information from the web sites displayed.  Others, who hadn’t yet made a choice, went to famous person search and marked African-American under ethnic/cultural heritage and then marked an occupation that interested them. 

After showing a powerpoint presentation to the class, the students were given a small sheet of paper with simple instructions on using netTrekker at school.  A note was also sent home to the parents showing them how to access netTrekker from home.  The students became excited about their research and were able to complete their project with ease. 

Ease of use makes netTrekker valuable to students and teachers alike.  Students quickly learn information when they have the tools to focus on their subject.  netTrekker is one of my favorite databases.  You can visit this site at netTrekker.com to make up your own mind.

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