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Infotopia

Infotopia is an academic search engine designed for "students, teachers, and especially homeschoolers." Created by Dr. Michael Bell (former chair of the Texas Association of School Librarians) and Carole Bell (former middle school librarian and director of libraries), Infotopia uses a Google custom search to provide accesses to previously vetted websites selected by librarians, teachers, and educational professionals. Rounding out this powerful search feature, Infotopia provides tabs on a series of different topics, from Arts to Biography to Games to Health. Each tab opens up to more subject links, for instance Biography features Biography, Hispanic Bios, and African American Bios. Selecting any of these sub-topics navigates to a page of related external resources, such as African-American Odyssey, Time for Kids: Black History Month, and The Franklin Institute. Readers will also be pleased to find an excellent blog elaborating on teacher-recommended resources.
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Date of Scout Publication
April 24th, 2015
Date Of Record Creation
April 22nd, 2015 at 10:54am
Date Of Record Release
April 22nd, 2015 at 11:22am
Resource URL Clicks
309

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Subject: Comment On: Infotopia
Posted By: drmichaelbell
Date Posted: 8/30/16 9:06pm
An Infotopia user had this to say: "Here it is – www.infotopia.info - the alternative to google that we should be telling our students about! Aside from just having fabulous background images that change every day, Infotopia is a quality search engine that uses limited and “approved” sources (i.e. not Wikipedia). It actually creates resource lists for searchers so that you know what sources the information is coming from. A simple serach is easy and quick but perhaps its best feature is the refinement bar on the top of every search. It provides a list of limitations and refinements that users can easily apply to their search. On my next day in the library I am going to set this site as the default internet browser and hope that teenagers’ natural inclination towards laziness causes them to use Infotopia for their searches." Freshlymintedlibrarian Blog