AcademicInfo: I hated this site. I found that there were far to many ads and sponsors on every page that made navigation cumbersome and not intuitive. I also found there seemed to be not as much information readily available as I would have wanted. The site itself contains a list of different subtopics that you can choose from that take you to a page with additional links related to that subtopic. I found the available content seemed to be geared more towards high school/college topics and would not apply as readily to my needs as an early childhood educator.
Archival Research Catalogue: This site could be useful for searching presidential archives and other national records but would be more useful for political science majors and I would probably never use this at the elementary level except to possibly find historical photographs for social studies lessons or for background information for myself prior to teaching.
BASE: Base was a lot easier to navigate and reminded me of the traditional academic article databases used when writing research papers. I found many articles pertaining to education and could use this search engine when writing papers for college classes or for professional development.
CiteULike: was similar to BASE and was very user friendly and had many articles pertaining to me as an educator. I felt comfortable navigating and was able to find many useful articles that I could read to help to grow as an educator or to get ideas for my classroom.
ERIC: is a site that I was already familiar with and have used in the past to do research both in high school as well as college. I could be mistaken, but it seems to require a subscription to view full articles making this a good way to locate articles, but not necessarily a great way to view them unless the school subscribes to this service.
GoogleScholar: is also a site that I am somewhat familiar with. I have used the site in the past to locate articles for short papers or to find research to support teaching practices. One frustration I have with this search engine is that I will often find an article that I would like to read, but the hosting site requires a subscription to view the full article. This means I spend a great deal of time sifting through suggestions to find one that is free or includes the full text.
INFOMINE: was one of my favorite search engines of the 12 I visited. The reason I liked this site was because it was very simplistic and easy to use, and the results I found were all full text and most did not require any subscriptions. The few that did require subscriptions had an indicator on the link so that I knew prior to clicking the link that I would be asked to either sign in or subscribe and I could simply bypass these links.
Infotopia: I love this search engine! Infotopia was made specifically for teachers, students, and homeschoolers to use. It is safe and simple and allows for easy navigation and searching without the worry of if the links you click will take your students to appropriate sites. The sites themselves are screened by other teachers and librarians and the results were fairly extensive for the searches that I made. My only complaint about this site is that it does have a fair amount of advertisements on the pages that could lead to students clicking advertisements and being exposed to inappropriate materials.
LibGuides: This site took me a while to figure out at first so I'm not a huge fan of it because it was not as intuitive as I would have liked. The search engine allows users to search for "guides" created by librarians on various topics. After I got more familiar with the site I was able to find some great resources on the topic of animal adaptations that I had been searching and because the guide was made by a librarian I felt fairly confident that the material would be appropriate for students.
Library of Congress: is similar to the Archival Research Catalogue holding many primary resources that could be helpful in older grades or for finding pictures for social studies lessons. I probably wouldn't not use this search engine often because of the age of my students.
Refseek: was another great search engine that could be used by teachers or students to find information. It reminded me of google in it's intuitive design and provided easy to access information and access to many relevant sites.
The Virtual LRC: was similar to Refseek and was a great intuitive search engine with resources prescreened by teachers and librarians. My only complaint about this search engine is that it contained more ads than Refseek.