Hello all,
Starting today, and over the next couple of days, I will be migrating the Edusafe.us Whole Web Safe Search page to a new search provider. Please forgive any interruptions that may occur.
The biggest impact that this change will have is for those of you who have downloaded the edusafe toolbars or installed the search widgets on your own sites. You will find that when the change takes place, search requests from those items will redirect to the new site, where you will have to perform the search again. Updated widgets and toolbars will be made available as soon as I can get to it.
The new whole web safe search engine is set to safe search, but I have added an additional level of control that was not available before. Keyword blocking. This powerful feature gives me the ability to block search requests based on the search term entered into the form. For instance, if the word "porn" is a blocked keyword (which it is), and someone types it into the search form, it is automatically ignored. So if someone typed "wild porn" into the search form, only the word "wild" is searched! Cool right?!
Now, I have a lot of keywords blocked, but if you discover a keyword or keyphrase that you think needs to be added to the list, please go to my contact page and e-mail. I'll evaluate the impact and add it to the list if it makes sense to do so.
Well, that's enough for now.. Please note that parts of the edusafe.us web site will not reflect the changes and will have old information for a while. But we are working as fast as we can!
As for the K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine, it will remain the same for a little while, but I may be changing the implementation a bit, soon. It seems that most of you prefer the "Whole Web" search as opposed to the more restirctive 'Educational sites only" search engine, anyways, so I'm not in a big hurry..
Thanks,
Wayne
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
Google, Ohhh, Google... why art thou such a pain in my behind...
Hello all..
Many of you may have noticed that the edusafe.us K-12 and GSS search engines were down this morning. I'm not going to get into any great amount of detail, but it appears that Google is not liking the success that http://www.edusafe.us is having and cut me off from a portion of the google site, which caused the edusafe site to stop delivering search results for some time.
So, anyways the site is back up and working again, but I am planning some changes. I had not anticipated these problems with Google and am as yet unsure what direction today's events are going to take me. Regardless of what I decide, please be aware that my mission to provide teachers and students with a Good SAFE SEARCH site remains my top priority. I will likely continue to use Google's safe search technology for some time unless I can find an alternative that meets or exceeds my expectations in this area. But please expect some changes to the site in the coming weeks. For instance, it is likely that the K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine will be merged with the GSS Search Engine. This is because my log data indicates that teachers and students prefer the GSS site. It was my hope that the K-12 search would be more popular as it focused specifically upon educational sites.
I have engaged Google to see if we can permanently resolve the problem that shut down the edusafe search sites today, but Google is hard to interact with, so I'll just have to wait and see if they even get back to me. The edusafe.us search pages should continue to work with it's current configuration, but expect some changes in the coming weeks.
Thank you,
Wayne Campbell
Many of you may have noticed that the edusafe.us K-12 and GSS search engines were down this morning. I'm not going to get into any great amount of detail, but it appears that Google is not liking the success that http://www.edusafe.us is having and cut me off from a portion of the google site, which caused the edusafe site to stop delivering search results for some time.
So, anyways the site is back up and working again, but I am planning some changes. I had not anticipated these problems with Google and am as yet unsure what direction today's events are going to take me. Regardless of what I decide, please be aware that my mission to provide teachers and students with a Good SAFE SEARCH site remains my top priority. I will likely continue to use Google's safe search technology for some time unless I can find an alternative that meets or exceeds my expectations in this area. But please expect some changes to the site in the coming weeks. For instance, it is likely that the K-12 Teacher - Student Safe Search Engine will be merged with the GSS Search Engine. This is because my log data indicates that teachers and students prefer the GSS site. It was my hope that the K-12 search would be more popular as it focused specifically upon educational sites.
I have engaged Google to see if we can permanently resolve the problem that shut down the edusafe search sites today, but Google is hard to interact with, so I'll just have to wait and see if they even get back to me. The edusafe.us search pages should continue to work with it's current configuration, but expect some changes in the coming weeks.
Thank you,
Wayne Campbell
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Top Sites for Teachers - New companion site for edusafe.us
It's Here! We at edusafe have launched a new companion site to edusafe.us. It is the Top Sites for Teachers website and it can be found HERE.
If you have a education or professional development based web site, please feel free to add it to our page. This is a free promotion opportunity for you.
About Sites For Teachers
Sitesforteachers.net is a companion site to http://www.edusafe.us. While the edusafe.us site is dedicated to creating a safe web searching environment for students and teachers, the sites for teachers web site is dedicated to providing quick access to the best teacher resources on the web, based on content and competition. If you are a webmaster and your site has high quality teacher resources like lesson plans, handouts, online teaching tools, quizzes and tests, pintables, reading lessons, math lessons, social studies lessons, geography lessons, or other high quality teacher resources you are encouraged to add your site.
If you have a education or professional development based web site, please feel free to add it to our page. This is a free promotion opportunity for you.
About Sites For Teachers
Sitesforteachers.net is a companion site to http://www.edusafe.us. While the edusafe.us site is dedicated to creating a safe web searching environment for students and teachers, the sites for teachers web site is dedicated to providing quick access to the best teacher resources on the web, based on content and competition. If you are a webmaster and your site has high quality teacher resources like lesson plans, handouts, online teaching tools, quizzes and tests, pintables, reading lessons, math lessons, social studies lessons, geography lessons, or other high quality teacher resources you are encouraged to add your site.
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