We live in an information rich world where the traditional educational paradigm must shift from content mastery to the development of “expert learners” who know how to find and use information effectively.  This point was made well by David Rose recently in conversation with Vicki Davis in a webinar hosted by Scholastic.

Since the learning process is unique to each learner, when a learner searches for information, it must be presented in multiple ways.  That’s why I appreciate the search engine I’m sharing here.

spezify is a search engine that presents search results visually.  spezify also  makes it easy for the searcher to distinguish between the different media in which information is presented on websites returned by a search.

Long lists of search results in text format do not work well for many searchers.  Spezify‘s search results are presented visually, and it is easy to distinguish between text, image and video sources.  Thumbnails for images can be enlarged on the search page, and videos can also be watched without leaving the search page.  For text sources, a single paragraph is presented as a “thumbnail”.  All results, of course, are linked to the originating websites.

It is easy to navigate through spezify‘s search results.  The page can be dragged up, down, and across.  Or, the keyboard’s arrow keys will shift the view.  You can click on the image below to enlarge this example of part of the search results for ‘Canadian Forces Snowbirds’