I recently had to do a school report on spiders. I got my information the usual way - by going to the library and looking through large encyclopedias under "spider" and "arachnid." I found the subject interesting, and I wanted to find out more on the Web. I asked my parents about what search site to use, and they suggested I try out Yahooligans!, Yahoo!'s new site especially for kids.
Right up front I found icons leading to new and cool sites, a Yahooligans! club, and an information area full of useful tips on searching and navigating the site. In the center of the page is a field where you can type keywords for your search. Further down are many subject-based links for different sections of Yahooligans!, including areas about school, entertainment, and science.
When I typed arachnology in the search field, I got a link to a long list of sites. I learned many interesting facts such as there are 30,000 species of spiders in every continent except Antarctica.
Yahooligans! isn't just for homework. It's also great fun. I wanted some information about Nintendo's Donkey Kong Country 2. So I tried a link to the Nintendo Power page. It had plenty of information on all kinds of games.
You don't have to be an expert to use Yahooligans! You just type a keyword in the search field. I could find almost any basic subject I needed. The problem is, there isn't a lot of detail to many things, and you may not find exactly what you are looking for. For instance, when I tried a search on medieval history, I typed medieval and then Middle Ages in the search field, I didn't get any matches. Maybe the particular words I used didn't appear on any of the Web pages listed by Yahooligans! Possibly because medieval sites aren't something Yahoo! thinks kids like.
Yahooligans! offers a lot of fun and interesting sites and gives several ways to search. Even if its scope is limited, this is a great place for kids to scour the Web.
Yahooligans!: www.yahooligans.com/. Yahoo! Corporation: +1 (408) 328 3300, fax +1 (408) 328 3301, email webmaster@yahooligans.com.
STREET CRED
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