Sweet Search is a great way to teach younger kids how to search for reliable information on the internet and a great way for older researchers to use critical thinking skills to compare their results with google.
Community Review for SweetSearch
My Take
Sweet Search should be the first "go-to" for research on the internet. For younger kids, the sites are vetted, the results and fewer (but still plentiful) and it is as easy to use as Google. For older students and adults, critical thinking skills get strengthened as you compare your results with another search engine like Google or Bing. Sweet Search also provides terrific colored highlighting of your search terms in the results and gives a much longer snapshot of your results in the hit list (Google's hit list could be much improved with this feature!)
How I Use It
It's a fantastic tool for student-driven learning at the Elementary school and even Middle School level because students know they will get reliable results (although much critical thinking is still required since they may not get relevant results). One negative for students is the listing of Finding Dulcinea articles as the top result; they find it confusing or self-promoting. The discussion of this provides a great exercise in media literacy, however.