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FINALLY: A PORN-FREE SEARCH ENGINE FOR KIDS
Introducing netTrekker home
The Number One Search Engine
in Schools Now Available for Home Purchase
Bests Google in Delivering Safe, Relevant Results for Homework;
Educator Evaluation and Proprietary Technology Give Access
to Web’s Best
180,000 Sites for Every Academic Subject
Cincinnati, OH - The facts are clear, the trends irreversible.
87 percent of children are regularly on the Internet, a weaned-on-the-web
generation that uses search engines as its primary research tool. But
one in four kids accidentally encounters pornography on the web, with
search engines as leading gateways. The average age of a child being
exposed to pornography for the first time on the web is 11. Studies
find that only six percent of the web is even relevant for schoolwork.
netTrekker home, a search engine released today by Thinkronize,
Inc., based here, solves these problems. It brings the full promise
of the Internet home to families seeking peace of mind through
safe, pornography-free text and image search, and to time-challenged
students needing resources to excel in an increasingly competitive
academic environment. netTrekker home is based on an award-winning
in-school version used by nearly 7 million students in 11,000 schools
nationwide. A monthly subscription costs $9.95 for unlimited access,
available at www.nettrekker.com,
where a 14-day free trial is offered.
The best way to test netTrekker home’s effectiveness
is to pit it against traditional search engines. A Google search
for the word "synonym" for a homework report delivers something
shocking: pornography sites, often among page one results. The
same search on netTrekker home returns only clearly-organized,
pornography-free links, relevant for research and sorted by reading
level. Each result is tagged with the evaluator’s report, rating
it on multiple measures, and providing full accountability to parents.
"Kids don’t have to work to find pornography on the web. It finds
them, in ways that parents may find shocking, like traditional
search for even the most innocent material," said Dr. Donald Jacobs,
Founder of the Center for Applied Technologies in Education at
the University at Buffalo. "netTrekker home takes the
danger, uncertainty and irrelevance out of Internet search for
homework. And, importantly, netTrekker home helps students
and parents get quick access to important information and resources
that are directly related to homework."
netTrekker home is about the right results, not commerce.
A Google search on "Ethan Allen" (with some 2.1 million "hits"
to wade through) would suggest there was a store before there was
a man. The same search on netTrekker home for a middle
school student returns 15 clearly sorted, information-rich, on-target
results, none directly linking to the furniture store chain.
netTrekker home is the first search engine of its kind
available for home purchase. It marries a hundreds-strong team
of educators, proprietary technology and some 180,000 websites
to produce search results that are pornography-free, and relevant
only for schoolwork. From math to foreign languages, from science
to social studies, current events, the arts, and much more, netTrekker
home delivers. It goes way beyond traditional search, with
features like multi-disciplinary timelines, famous person search,
results tailored to different reading levels, and other tools inviting
deep exploration.
"netTrekker home works better than traditional search
for schoolwork for two reasons: people and technology. No matter
how powerful technology becomes, there is no substitute for people
when it comes to judging relevance of content, particularly when
it’s information for our children," said Christine Willig, Thinkronize’s
President. "Our network of hundreds of educators, all specialists
in specific subject areas, continually searches the Internet for
sites that are pornography-free and truly helpful for schoolwork.
Our technology takes it from there, further scrubbing the Internet
for unsafe sites, removing ‘dead links’ and delivering only information
that matters to students."
netTrekker home delivers way beyond search. Many results
are tagged with a small timeline icon. Clicking on it returns a
multidisciplinary, graphical timeline, showing how prominent events,
people, arts and more coincided with and coalesced around that
subject, providing depth, context and inviting deeper exploration.
Every detail on the timeline is itself clickable, providing search
results relevant to it.
A "Famous Person" feature makes it fast and easy to find deep
detail on important figures, from the famous to the obscure, through
a search-building tool that enables search around specific parameters;
even if a person’s name is unknown to your child, netTrekker
home stands a good chance of delivering. A dictionary "hot
key" makes every word in a netTrekker home result clickable,
to return that word’s definition a critical feature for students
for whom English may not be the primary language.
netTrekker home’s developer, Thinkronize, is dedicated
to enhancing the education of youth through technology. Visit netTrekker
home on the web at www.nettrekker.com,
or call toll-free at 877-517-1125.
About Thinkronize
Thinkronize, an Internet developer of award-winning K-12 educational
products, was founded by Robert
Reinders in July, 1999 and grew out of a commitment to enhancing
teaching and learning with the Internet and standards-based online
resources. The company's flagship product, netTrekker classic,
the trusted search engine for schools, was launched in October
2000. Since the launch of netTrekker classic, Thinkronize
has enjoyed steady growth, industry recognition and awards. The
netTrekker in-school product suite includes netTrekker
d.i., which organizes online resources by readability level
to meet individual students' learning needs and also includes ELL
content. Thinkronize serves some 7 million students in more than
11,000 schools in 48 states; the netTrekker product suite
has been adopted by key districts nationwide. For more information
visit www.thinkronize.com or
phone 877-517-1125.
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