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Thursday, March 27, 2014

Tech Thursday: Google SafeSearch

This week's tech tip: how to set up Google SafeSearch.

Our school has a pretty good internet filter, but sometimes things still show up on my students' Google searches that I would rather not be there. (Especially true of 5th grade boys!) There are a ton of student friendly SafeSearch sites out there, but my big kids want to just "Google it" so they usually don't go to those sites unless I am hovering over them.

Enter Google SafeSearch. If you have a Google account, you can even lock SafeSearch so that you have to be the one to turn it off! The downside is that you'll have to do this on every computer, but if it will clean up the search results (and I'm hoping also the Google ads), it's worth it!

Here's how to get it done:

1. Go to http://www.google.com/preferences
2. At the top of the first screen you'll see this:

3. Turn on SafeSearch by checking the "filter explicit results" box.
4. If you have a Google account, you can lock this setting. Just click the "lock safe search button".
5. After you enter your password, you will be taken to this screen, and you'll need to click "lock safe search" again.

6. It will work for a few seconds, and when it's ready you'll see this:


As my students would say, easy peasy, lemon squeezy! Hope this helps clean up your students' Google searches!

2 comments:

  1. i have a question about the safe search option - at my school we have 20 laptops for our 4th grade, so one child in each class shares a laptop. They each have their own login. Will the safe search be saved if I login into each computer with my login and set the preferences? Or would I need to login as each child and then set the preferences? As we just finished up a HUGE research project - I wish I had known this at the beginning of January:)
    Thanks, Janie
    Are We There Yet?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I did not know about this. Thank you! I will definitely use it!

    Mary
    Fit to be Fourth

    ReplyDelete

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