InstaGrok – Funny Name, Great Tool!

Have you heard about InstaGrok?

 

Grok means to understand thoroughly and intuitively. InstaGrok is a powerful, interactive search engine designed specifically for the classroom. A "grok" can be created by simply entering a topic in the search box. Answers are returned in six different categories: key facts, websites, videos, images, quizzes and a glossary instead of a static list of links.  Please understand, a blog post does not do it justice. You have to experience it for yourself. Try a quiz. Find a video. Review terms.

 Key Features

• It is free and specifically made for education. (Creating a login/free account gives you more options and of course there is a paid version with even more options.)
• It is interactive and it is NOT flash-based so it works on the iPad.
• The Quiz tool provides classroom-ready questions on your search term. Have the students take the quiz or use the questions to add to your own quizzes.
• Results can be customized using a “difficulty slider” in the upper right-hand corner. The difficulty slider ranges from Elementary Level to Einstein level.
• Results are filtered and safe.
• Groks can be shared and embedded into your blog, website, etc.

Ideas for Classroom Use

• Create an interactive mind-mapping tool
• Curate information
• Really learn vocabulary words
• Explore complicated ideas
• Find images and videos in one click
• Allow for self-assessment through the quiz feature
• Teach students how to narrow down search results

For More Information

To read more about InstaGrok, click here or try it out and let us know what you think. Finally, a big shout out to Angie Bakke... thanks for sharing!