Deer Park Turns Internet into Valuable Learning Resource with netTrekker
by Mitchell Levine

Like many school districts nationwide, Deer Park Public Schools in Deer Park, New York faced the challenge of integrating technology and online resources into their K-12 curricula and classrooms. Enrico Crocetti, Administrator for M.I.S. for the district, and a forward thinking technology advocate, wanted to provide his teachers and students with high quality, online resources that would energize their K-12 curricula. He also faced a second challenge with a new data-mining project the district was undertaking, which underscored the need for resources specific to grade level and New York State Standards. In his research to find a tool that met both of these objectives, he discovered netTrekker, the trusted search engine for schools.

netTrekker is an academic search engine specifically designed for school use. Unlike ordinary search engines, like Google or Yahoo, netTrekker saves educators and students time by providing access to only prescreened and educationally relevant online resources. netTrekker contains over 180,000 websites that are hand-selected by a team of educators who evaluate each resource for academic integrity and age appropriateness.

If a student or teacher were researching “Ethan Allen” using other search engines, results for the “Ethan Allen” furniture store are returned. Students and teachers then have to sift through a number of resources that aren’t appropriate or relevant to the topic they’re researching. With netTrekker, only results that relate to “Ethan Allen” the patriot are returned, so students stay focused on the task at hand.

netTrekker also takes their extensive database of high quality online resources and aligns them with the New York State Standards. Because they are mandated by the state to integrate these standards into their lesson plans and curricula, New York teachers value this capability. With netTrekker, teachers can easily log on, type in a specific New York standard and benchmark that they need to teach that day, and with a click of a mouse, they can find online resources that support and reinforce that particular benchmark. For example, if a teacher needs to find a lesson plan that supports the New York standard regarding “The Bill of Rights”, she or he need only go to netTrekker and within seconds, they can find the resources they need.

Over the past year, Deer Park Schools has benefited from being a member of the growing netTrekker community of educators.This success is punctuated by the district’s extensive experience with web-based services.Often as the district utilizes services, they come to know their shortcomings.With netTrekker, however, the deeper the Deer Park users delve into the vast array of curricula available, the more pleased they have been with the netTrekker service. As Deer Park continues to develop prescriptions to improve student learning, the district finds netTrekker becoming a more critical component of their teachers’ toolbox. According to Enrico, “netTrekker is the most valuable web-based asset we have!”#

For more information on netTrekker, please visit the companies website www.netTrekker.com or call toll free 1-877-517-1125.

Name:- E-mail: City: State: Comments:

Education Update, Inc., P.O. Box 1588, New York, NY 10159.
Tel: (212) 477-5600. Fax: (212) 477-5893. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of the publisher. © 2003.