Tech Tidbits: Wolfram Alpha

Research is an important facet of academic learning on all levels of education, including elementary school, all the way through high school, and it is important for learners to be able to locate and evaluate research results that are trustworthy, responsibly sourced, and accurate.  You can't always guarantee that with a Google search!  One online search engine that provides accurate and responsibly sourced results for information searches is Wolfram Alpha, which refers to itself as a "computational knowledge engine".

  

Wolfram Alpha provides search results on almost any topic you can imagine, without results that offer opinions or bias.  The results are presented as data, which can proven as factual, as opposed to other search engines that provide top results based on popularity or relevance.  It allows you to perform searches on topics based on a large variety of categories, including mathematics; words & linguistics; people & history; chemistry; physics; music; astronomy; art & design; places & geography; and many more. 

You can also search for information on two different people or areas in order to provide results that compare the two search topics with each other.  For example, you can search for "George Washington" and "Abraham Lincoln" at the same time, and the results will create a data table comparing the birthdates, places born, dates of death, and places of death of the two people.  A similar search can be done for different towns or cities, which can be used to explore objectives in Social Studies.  

Feel free to explore the different categories provided to see what other types of searches you can conduct!  There are entirely too many to list here, so explore what Wolfram Alpha has to offer!