MiddleSpot:
This site is designed for educators. This site allows you to interpret information faster from their search results, collect and annotate relevant results into groups, and share those collections with people relying on their expertise.
To begin you start a mash tab. This allows you to collect web pages, images, music, videos, web widgets, files, documents, code, and more in one central spot. While I was learning about the web site, I realized it was really valuable. It is a quick way to search for images, papers, educational articles, etc. It's hard to argue with results. A study by Microsoft Research reveals that presenting a screenshot in conjunction with a text result allows a user to locate desired web pages faster and easier in almost every attempt. Our brain is designed to filter, distinguish, associate, and select information first and foremost visually. Middlespot.com is designed to take advantage of this strength by providing a patented interface that helps you determine the relevancy of your results with greater efficiency and accuracy.
Middlespot also acts as a search interface, allowing you to submit your search query to a number of search engines and social services like Yahoo, Flickr, Amazon, Twitter, and Microsoft. We also keep track of what you searched for, from where, and when and make it easy for you to access anytime using our "recent searches" tool.
This Web 2.0 tool would be very effective to use in a classroom. It would be very helpful to filter through websites to actually find relevant information. I know from my own experience with my action research it is frustrating trying to find valid and reliable information.
"Middlespot.com is designed to take advantage of this strength by providing a patented interface that helps you determine the relevancy of your results with greater efficiency and accuracy." I will have to check how this works. Sounds like an invaluable tool for teachers and students. Great post!
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