Welcome to our Search Engines and Plugin Page. Google is a super-fast and accurate way to search the web. Teoma and Vivisimo are two new search engines which have refined the way that Google searches the web and are now rated by many users as superior to Google at present. We suggest you compare the results of their searches with that of Google and make up your own mind. Click Here for Plugins Scroll down this page for a description and links to the free web plugins you will need to get the best out of your web experience. Worried about Internet Safety for your class? - then use Google Safe Search Below. How often have you been told that something is in pdf format or you need Shockwave? What is a browser and what is a plugin? Why do we need them? Below we answer these questions and highly recommend that you take some time and update your web browsing experience and really get the 'Best of the Web' for you and your students: THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT ALL THESE PLUGINS ARE FREE! All it takes is a little time and following the simple instructions BROWSERS You really have just two choices here - Netscape/Communicator or Internet Explorer. A browser is simply the software you use to connect to the web. Always make sure you have the latest version. To download the browser of your choice, simply click on the icons below which will take you to the download centres. Choose the browser that is for your system - Windows or Macintosh, follow the instructions and download. It can take up to an hour depending on your modem speed but it is well worth it! Click for Netscape Click for Explorer Shockwave Shockwave and Flash Player are programmes which let you view and see all sorts of web wonders such as: videos, music, animation, web cams and multimedia pages such as virtual tours of museums and cities. Shockwave and Flash Player are FREE programmes and take about 5 minutes each to download. Click this icon for Shockwave Click this icon for Flash Player Real Player Great for listening to all audio and radio stations on the web and for listening to and downloading mpeg audio files. A must have plugin. There are several different programmes featured on the site. Choose what you want - they are free! Click this icon for Real Player PDF Files PDF stands for portable document format. These are files that can be read by any computer, eg Windows or a Macintosh system. They are often pages designed for magazines and preserve the print format. Starters & Strategies magazine for example is on the web in pdf format and more and more sites have pdf files to download. To be able to read them you need the FREE Acrobat Reader programme. Once installed on your computer, simply download the pdf file you want from the web and click it and Acrobat Reader will open it up for you. Click this icon for Acrobat Reader. It normally takes less than 5 minutes to download. Either leave the programme on your desktop or if you want to read the page on the web, put it in to your browsers plugin folder. QuickTime Player For both Macintosh and Windows computers - an increasingly popular programme used by many sites with video, sound, animation, streaming video and graphics. Click on the icon. Windows Media Player For Windows and Macintosh Computers. It does most of the above but is the Microsoft product in competition to Quicktime. The site will tell you if it needs it, eg quite popular on some streaming video web cam sites. Click on the icon