I spend several hours every week (sometimes many hours) using search engines to look for online instructional resources that might be of use to instructors in higher education. I rely mostly on Google and Scirus (the science-targeted search engine) but I also regulary use additional search engines such as Alta Vista, AlltheWeb, Teoma, Yahoo, Lycos, and others--just because what one engine misses another may detect. The search entries that I use include "instructional resources," "educational resources," "learning resources," "learning objects," "learning repositories," and related terms.
I've recently begun to supplement these searches by using KartOO because this meta search engine (or "relational search engine interface") yields a graphical display of the search objects that it finds. The graphical display, along with the textual descriptions, provide a way of thinking about the information universe that I find very stimulating--it leads to interesting connections and unexpected linkages. In a way KartOO simulates the experience of browsing library stacks, except this virtual online library of resources extends around the world. Like stack browsing, KartOO is not the most efficient way to conduct searches, especially lengthy, multi-page searches, but it is an additional tool that adds a valuable dimension to the search process.
I've tried a few other graphical search engines in the past, but KartOO is definitely the clearest, best-organized, and easiest-to-use system that I've seen. Because it is a meta search engine, spanning many other search engines, it provides a more efficient way to cross search than repeating searches on each separate engine.
KartOO is available in five languages (including English, French, and Spanish) and provides a simple Help guide. The Options allow control of the search engines that are utilized (Google is not included, but Yahoo and Alta Vista are), number of sites displayed, clustering, timeouts, and other features explained in the How to Use KartOO directions. KartOO can be utilized in a standard html mode or a Flash mode; I definitely recommend the Flash mode because the cartographic displays are uniquely informative and the Flash mode includes more features. Indeed, it's instructive to toggle between the html/Flash modes just to appreciate how much is added by a cartographic display.
Two of the most important features of KartOO are the -/+ feature to subtract or add semantic topics for a followup search and the find-similar-sites feature that allows the searcher to locate a "perfect" site and then tell KartOO to find sites that are like the ideal site. Another extremely valuable feature is the capability to save the search and to send it to yourself or to someone else via email. (E.g. see page one of the search I did on "learning object repositories"+"higher education" at http://www.kartoo.com/flash.php3?ca=21560&langue=en.)
I also like the feature that shows, when putting a cursor on a discovered site, which search engines detected the site and, by default, which engines did not; this feature vividly demonstrates how important it is to do multiple searches across multiple search engines rather than a single search. (This Inf@Vis article about KartOO gives a useful overview of the search engine features and how they operate, http://www.kartoo.net/en/press/2002/press_aout/infovis.htm.)
KartOO is a information tool that should be of interest to both instructors and students, useful as an information tool and a thinking tool, as a teaching device and a learning device. KartOO was developed in France by Laurent and Nicolas Baleydier. To learn more about their company, KarTOO SA, see http://www.kartoo.net/en/pgkartoosa.html and http://www.kartoo.net/en/pgpresse2.html.
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