Teachers' opinions of PoSTech [search engine] is needed Please!

In connection with the iClass project and my research at the Institute of Education I have been working on designing a Personalised Search Tool for Teachers called PoSTech, see Personalised Search Tool for Teachers

Therefore, if you are a school teacher (primary, secondary or post-compulsory) in UK and have ten minutes to spare then your help would be really appreciated.

To search with the personalised search tool just type in your search keyword/s, followed by selecting your preferred category/ies i.e. subject, resource type and advanced search options, as you would do normally with other search engines, like Google or Yahoo and then click on the 'Search' button to view your personalised search results.

To send us your feedback please click on the 'feedback' button' (coloured yellow) to complete the online questionnaire. Please note, to see the 'feedback button' teachers would need to click on the 'Search' button first.

**** To identify UK teachers, teachers' name and school address are required, however, if you do not wish to disclose all or any of these information please just type in 'ESL Forum' and 'UK' for your name and school address.


For further information please contact Faezeh Seyedarabi at the Institute of Education, University of London.


Your support and valuable time is most appreciated,
Faezeh.

It has a log-in with username and password- how do we get in?

Hello Tdol,

Please type in the following URL www.postech.me.uk instead of clicking on the link above to access the website; the system does not ask you to enter username or password.

I look forward to reading your comments and/suggestions,
Many thanks,
Faezeh.

I test drove it with the term 'idioms'.

With the 'paid' option, this site comes first. With 'free' it goes to second and Wikipedia comes up to number 1. How is paid/free worked out?- a number of the free sites do well in 'paid'. When I set it to 'government' or 'education' the search still brings us up, though the search thread for the later has 'edu' in it. I am not 100% clear how it is working, though the choice of English as a subject wouldexplain why Idiomsite, which is number 1 in Altavista, drops to number seven in PoSTech.

Hello Tdol,

Thank you very much for your comments.
Would it be possible for you to complete the online questionnaire (click on the feedback button in PoSTech) so that my colleagues and I could further investigate this problem.

Furthermore, as a token of our appreciation we will donate £1 to SOS Children's Villages (charity number 1069207), for every completed questionnaire.

I look forward to receiving your feedback,
Very best wishes,
Faezeh.