At first I thought I didn't really want to do much for this "thing" because I already use Google Reader. To be fair, my use of Google Reader has decreased significantly recently - probably because of twitter. There's only just so much I can keep up with. I do think that it's fun to look at on Flipboard, I just prefer twitter and find that there is quite a bit of overlap. However, a few different things intrigues me and I gave them a whirl.
First I tried Symbaloo. One of my fifth grade classes is researching Canadian provinces, so I thought it was a good chance to try a new way to share pre-selected websites. Overall, I like the way Symbaloo looks, but I find the process of adding tiles to be a little cumbersome. Nothing I was looking for was ever found in Symbaloo's search box. I always had to go back out to Google, search, and then add a new tile. I did not like that I had to select a weirdo icon for the tile, either. Can't Symbaloo figure out how to grab an icon or image from the page? I also can't figure out how to edit the tiles once they're on the webmix. I think the students will like using it because it's different, but I'm not sure it's worth the extra time on my part. I'll give it a shot and see how the students respond. Here is the link to what I'm working on.
The other thing I tried (again) is Netvibes. I had played around with Netvibes in the past, but I never really got into it (much like I never really got into the iGoogle pages). However, I was suddenly struck with a brilliant, although not very original idea. I saw Polly's page with all the different blogs listed and it hit me: I should be using Netvibes to keep up with my sixth graders reading blogs! Duh! As it stands right now, I have all of last year's students and all of this year's students blogs all mixed up on my Wordpress account. I know who is who because I can tell by the number of posts, but I knew it would get more complicated as the years and classes keep coming. I'm reluctant to delete the old blogs just yet - you never know what you might need, and to delete a WP blog is to delete it forever. Anyway, I went ahead and logged into my old Netvibes account and created a new tab for the class of sixth graders. It is AWESOME and I am so happy with how easy it is to see them all! I am going to offer to help the classroom teacher set up something similar - unless anyone knows of a way to share the Netvibes page? I can't seem to get it off "private." I tried to update the account information with my birthdate, but it doesn't like my username. What are the consequences of my username being changed? Even if I can't change it to make it easier to share, it is a useful tool for me to keep up with their blogs and get a quick feel for what they are reading and blogging about.
I am so glad I spent a little time exploring these tools. I definitely found a use for Netvibes that I, for whatever reason, had not thought of before. I know it's going to make my life much easier. Whoop!
I remember that it was awkward to set up the public page on Netvibes. But here's the help page: http://faq.netvibes.com/public_page
ReplyDeleteYou're only allowed one public page per account, but that one page can have lots of tabs, each tab with lots of content. That's how I set up the one for our project.
And when I needed a public page for another project, I had to set up another Netvibes account with another email address.