Wow! The recently redesigned Ask Kids search engine is very very impressive! Ask Kids is the kid friendly, kid safe version of the popular search engine Ask.com. The first thing that new visitors to Ask Kids will notice is the notebook paper theme and five search categories. Then visitors will notice the drawing tools in the lower right hand corner of the home page. The drawing tools don’t seem to have much purpose other than just providing tools to customize the Ask Kids homepage (clearing cookies resets the homepage). On the other hand, the five search categories are very useful and easy to navigate.

Ask Kids is divided into five categories of which one is a general search option. The five categories are School House, movies, games, images, and video. The School House category provides students with suggested topics and links to resources for those topics. The School House also serves as a general search tool. In the other search categories Ask Kids makes suggestions for search refinement. A great aspect of the search results that Ask Kids provides is the option to refine searches based on a student’s age.

Applications for Education
Ask Kids is a great search tool for elementary school and middle school students. The suggested search refinements are a great model for teaching students how to alter their Internet search terms to find the information for which they are looking. The “filter by age” option is useful for parents trying to help their child find information appropriate for their grade level.