Search the PLATOWA website and its Breaking News Archive

Note: The FreeFind search will sometimes give you a link to a news item on the PLATO home page, but you find the item isn't there. That's because the search index is updated once or twice a week, while articles are moved from the home page to the Breaking News Archive after two days. Thus search results that link to the Archive should always work.

Search Tips

By default the search engine tries to locate pages which have exact matches for all of the words entered in your search query. If that fails, it then tries to locate pages which contain any words in your search query. If that happens a short message is displayed at the top of the search results indicating this has been done.

In addition, there are several ways to modify the default search behavior.

1. phrase search
The search engine supports three types of phrase search.

• To match an exact phrase, use quotes around the phrase
  Example: "Greg Williams"
  
• To match a near (within a couple of words) phrase, use square brackets [around the words]
  Example: [Williams OBE]
  
• To match a far (within several words) phrase, use braces {around the words}
  Example: {Williams levels}
  

2. + and - qualifiers

If you prepend a word with + that word is required to be on the page.
If you prepend a word with - that word is required to not be on the page.
Example: +always -never

3. * wildcard
If a query word ends with a * all words on a page which start the same way as that query word will match.
Example: outcom*

4. ? wildcard
If a query word contains a ? any character will match that position.
Example: O?E

5. boolean search
You can use the following boolean operators in your search: AND, OR, NOT. These operators MUST be in capital letters.
Example: (Kessell AND Curriculum) OR (Williams AND outcomes)

All of these techniques can be combined: +alway* -ne??r*

Note: Like all search engines, this one will give you only the web pages that meet your search criteria.

Many of the PLATO pages, especially those in the Breaking News Archive, are rather long [7 days' education news]; the search engine will give you the link to the entire page. So you will want to use your Internet Browser's search capability to find the words within the page:

Edit –> Find [in/on this page]