  About 'Search It Out!' Web QuizzesAt first glance you might think that 'Search It Out!' Web Quizzes are actually just WebQuests under a different name. However, these are not WebQuests, and teachers should understand the difference before setting their students to work on these quizzes.A WebQuest is a very directed research project, in which the student is given not just questions, but instructions on what web page to go to in order to find the result. The primary purpose of the WebQuest is for a student to gain information about a specific subject, and - incidentally - to use the internet as a research resource. How is this different from a Search It Out! Web Quiz? These quizzes are much more open ended. The quiz contains questions, but does not list specific web pages that contain the answers. The primary purpose of the Search It Out! quiz is not to find information about a specific subject, but to gain practice in using the internet as a research resource. And, incidentally, the student may learn something about a particular subject in the process. Using These Quizzes In Your Classroom Obviously, no answers are posted on the site; if they were, no one would have to do the research! Thus, you may want to do the quiz yourself before you put your class to work on it. You can assign these quizzes as a "just for fun" activity for students who finish their other work early. In this case, you may not feel that it is necessary to check their work. If a quiz is given as a class assignment, however, you may wish to have your students write down their answers and the web address where they found the answer, so you can check their work. Even better, if they type their answers in a word processor, you can check their work by clicking the links they found! Before beginning a Search It Out! quiz, students may wish to review the Search Engine Tips page, to make sure they understand the best ways to get information from a search engine. Using The Internet As always, teachers and parents are encouraged to carefully monitor what children are doing on the internet; and this is particularly true with the Search It Out! web quizzes. In a WebQuest, you know exactly which web pages your students are supposed to visit. In a Search It Out! quiz, the student goes wherever their search queries take them. In order to help protect students from stumbling across inappropriate sites, each quiz contains a Google "Safe Search" box. Students who use the safe search box will see only seach results which Google deems appropriate for all audiences. Information about Safe Search can be found at Google's website.
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