In his workshop, Will Richardson mentioned that one way to network outside the campus is to become “clickable” or findable on the web.
You could create your own blog (at edublogs.org or blogger.com) or a wiki (at pbwiki.com or wikispaces.com)–or you could create a learning laboratory for your students on PageFlakes.
Page Flakes (similar to Google home page or My Yahoo) lets you create your own personalized news and media page. You could create one for your class or subject area, and pull in only articles, video, and photos that relate to the topic you were studying or to your course.
The example Will gave involved a unit on Darfur, where he pulled in information from many different sources. Each time a student views your page, it updates the information for them.
You can add pages, delete pages, delete areas of the page, rearrange the page, etc.
You can try it without joining–try the “add a flake” button at the top of the menu or try clicking “edit” above each area to customize it.
If you wanted customize it to a particular unit, you can use the “Add feed” feature and just enter the website that you want it to pull information from.
So if you wanted to pull in information from a blog or a news site, you just type the url and it finds the “news stream” or feed, which you can then add to your site. (Or you could use the RSS feed feature if you want to try something more advanced.)
Creating a flake would allow your students to access your page from home or school and see the content you were interested in them knowing more about.
flickr image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/supamb/
I think it would be GREAT if we would do a school-wide initiative and have every student create a PageFlake for their “Personal Learning” space. It could be as artistic (with photos, etc.) as the student wanted to make it. The value would be that the student could blog, update, read RSS feeds of interest, share their knowledge about PageFlake and invite others to view (while working in computer labs, or classroom computers, etc.) As students (& faculty) catch on, we will all learn faster, by watching, modeling, etc. It’s going to take all of us spending more time encouraging this NEW WORLD of learning for Web 2.0. This is my wisdom for Blog Friday.
Pageflakes is an interesting idea. I have not come across that before and will take some time to play with it.
I am part of the PLP consortium Will and Sheryl are leading and our small group discussed Will’s concept of becoming clickable. We decided the way to do that was to get your “hands dirty” and start clicking. There are so many new tools emerging almost at a daily rate that it is hard to keep up with them all. But to focus on one thing and give it a go might be a good strategy.
Julia,
I think your idea is right. Find one or two tools that interest you or are helpful to you, and then get to know them.
It seems to me that once you get your feet wet with a few things, it’s easier to try other things!
Thanks for stopping by!
I’m also part of the PLP consortium Will and Sheryl are leading and just browsing this site I was trying to think how I can implement it into my classroom tommorrow. I have my students blog on edublogs about articles I find for them, but that has its limits. Page Flakes seems like it would be more real to the students. I also like that the information updates as more news or information becomes available. This will keep the students from getting bored with the stale information.
GREAT SITE!!!
Hi Carolyn,
I am also a member of the PLP that Sheryl and Will are leading and I am finding myself wanting to spend more and more time on the Internet finding new ideas to implement with the staff development that I deliver. I have created a wiki for some colleages of mine to use as a collaboration tool, and am trying new classroom 2.0 tools. Thanks for sharing the information about Pageflakes. It is yet something else I would like to check out.
I’m part of Sheryl and Will’s consortium also. My team has created wikis to use with their classes. PageFlakes looks interesting. I’ll have to try that site.
I too am a part of the PLP consortium. I agree with Julia that there are so many tools to choose from that it is difficult to keep up. I like your suggestion of narrowing things down to a few that work for me (but it takes a while to wade through it all!). Thanks for sharing about PageFlakes. It sounds interesting.
I’m eager to check out PageFlakes. One of the frustrations in building one’s own PLN is that it often involves enrolling in so many different communities to form one’s own network. At this point, I’ve joined wikispaces, Ning, twitter, del.icio.us, and edublogs, but haven’t contributed enough to be truly clickable. How does one get over “blog-fright”? I seem to be more of a consumer than contibuter.
I have a Google Reader RSS, but PageFlakes may be a better way to have information come to me. Wow, Vicki that sounds like a great idea for students!
I have used Google pages in a similar manner; however, this seems to load quicker. I like the idea of everything I’m interested in coming to one location. It seems like a time saver.
I’ve been introduced to so much. It’s great to find a time saver.
Welcome to all of you! I do think the key is “getting your hands wet” and just trying things out. Some will work and make sense for you, and some won’t.
It takes awhile to become really “clickable” but you have to gradually build up some sort of presence on the web.
And you have to decide on your goal–maybe it’s just to be clickable within your school district, to begin with? Or maybe you want to build global connections?
There’s other sites I’d also recommend if you haven’t already–particularly some of the NING sites are a way to connect to other educators, like globaleducation.ning.com or classroom20.ning.com.
And I’m sure Will and Sheryl have talked with you about Twitter. Find a few influential people to follow and you’ll gradually find your own network there as well.
But I do think one of the most important pieces to becoming clickable is to develop your own blog. It’s a place for you to reflect what you are learning, as well as to share ideas with other educators. Blogs take all forms, too–I know not all of us are writers–but you can have a video blog or a photo-based blog that share what is going on in your learning community.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you take time to wander through my blog!
Thank you for the information about PageFlakes. I am interested in trying it. I will need to think about how to use it with second grade students. I like the idea of having many ideas on one page.
As another member of Sheryl and Will’s consortium, I’d like to have about an hour to examine and play with Page Flakes. As a teacher of English literature (for which 90+% of our reading is in the public domain), I’ve often though about having a class without a text book. We’d simply use the sources and texts available online. If I remotely understand PageFlakes, it sounds like this could be a host site for all of our readings. For anyone who has used PageFlakes, does this sound like a viable way to use the site? Thanks for any feedback.
Tim,
The main idea behind Pageflakes is to bring in “live” feeds that are updated constantly from sites with RSS feeds, so I’m not sure it’s the best site for your purpose?
Although it does have an area where you can keep bookmarks which would then link to the texts you found online.
I think it’s a great idea not having a textbook, and accessing texts online but a wiki might be a better way to do that.
(Of course that might depend on if the texts you read are available online full-text, as some aren’t if they are copyrighted?) But you could certainly link to ones that were online and use the wiki to build a curriculum or pathfinder as you went through your course.
What course do you teach and what sorts of texts would you be reading?
Thanks for stopping by,
Carolyn
Carolyn:
Thanks for that response. I teach an English Literature class that begins with Chaucer and Sir Gawain and moves as far into the 20th century as we can get. Our primary text is the Norton Anthology, and you know how cumbersome that book is. We do read a few Shakespeare plays each year and I’d likely always have them buy those texts since they are relatively cheap and portable. But since almost everything we read (from the poems to the other plays and novels) is in the public domain, I’ve entertained the idea of no text book.
Wikis are relatively new to me, but creating one for my class that one day could replace the text may be my project for this course.
Thanks for your advice.
Tim
Thanks for sharing! Pageflakes will be a nicer, more-student friendly alternative to Google Reader. Each quarter I have my students do a report on some recent published scientific work of their choosing. This is an easier way to get their fingers out there at all times. Most of our sources now have RSS feeds.
Thanks for sharing Pageflakes, Carolyn. This might just be the answer for making my students more engaged in the more boring aspects of seventh grade English–grammar! I, too, am embarking on this journey with Sheryl and Will. Although it’s overwhelming now, I can see the glimmer of inspired young minds on the horizon.
Katie,
I think there are several “grammar” podcasts I’ve seen on iTunes that might be fun to include on a Pageflakes, as well as news feeds about usage?
Also, there is a place where you can add your own bookmarks to sites that aren’t “live feeds” but just pages you want to include on your Pageflakes site.
Simon, Pageflakes(or Netvibes also) are great ways to, as you say, have students “get their fingers out there at all times.” Great way to model for students how to have their “research” tools working in the background for them!
Wow! Just when I was getting used to the idea of Blogger.com and wikispaces, you throw in Pageflakes and Flitter and Twitter, or is it Flicker or Twicker? Seriously, there are so many tools out there. Those of us who are true novices need to be reminded that we don’t have to know it all. We just need to be open to learning it all.
This is great! I just set one up and it was fairly easy to do. The kids will have no problem with it. I think I will encourage our students to use it as a homepage on their laptops to help them with their organization. It has a place for tasks, a calendar, class schedules, and much more. Thanks again.
There really are so many tools-thank you for your suggestions about Pageflakes. I will take look at that as well as some others mentioned. Since I am just beginning, do I really want to be more “clickable”? I am a bit overwhelmed as it is-so I think I will become more comfortable, before I become clickable. 🙂
This sounds like a great tool. I can’t wait to give it a try. Are there any concerns I should know about or address before getting my students involved?
Thanks in advance.
I think page flakes are great!!!!
Some great stuff. I think it is important to take it slow.
Sharing is great but when I googled my own name I was led to my classroom website and newsletter. That made me rather uncomfortable…
Last week, I discovered google home pages and calendars and have been diddling around with them personally. Because I did that, I feel like I had an introduction to Pageflakes and can visualize a classroom context. In some ways, my serendipitous wanderings and flailings on the web are real portholes to understanding. Hey, am I becoming a 21st century learner?
Hi, I am part of Will and Sheryl’s 2009 PLP program. I read all your comments and was wondering if anyone has ever used Pageflakes in a Primary School environment with students. I can see its value as a personal tool to follow stuff after watching a youtube tutorial on it.