InstaGrok is an innovative educational search engine which creates interactive concept map, which can be customized and shared. The concept map features Key Facts – the important facts about the topic (with links to the original content page). The interactive visual interface allows the user to quickly grasp important concepts, key facts and relationships. Users can open a journal which includes note taking and cites all of the resources with active hyperlinks, creating a fully interactive journal that can be saved and shared.

InstaGrok is free. An account is required to customize, save and share concept maps. Educator accounts are an option and are $45/year with a 30-day free trial. An educator account features a teacher dashboard in which educators can see what students are investigating, how much time was spent, and what is written in their journals. Teachers can also provide assignments to guide research, or review students’ bibliography. A maximum of 200 students can connect to each teacher.
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Educational uses:
  • Conduct informal online research as a starting point for more in-depth learning
  • Create a concept map with connected websites, videos, and images

Getting Started

  1. Sign in as a general member at InstaGrok.
  2. Enter a concept in the search field.
  3. Play with the resulting Grok by altering the difficulty level of the concepts, clicking on any bubble on the map to gain greater depth, and viewing resulting videos, links, and images.
  4. Have you, your colleagues, or your students create a Grok related to a topic of study in class.
  5. Using the Instagrok journal, write about the research with the sources pre-populated in the journal.