Like a baby’s laugh, an unexpected rainbow sighting, the quiet sound of rain in the spring, a cherry coke (extra cherries), finding money as you sort laundry, a single yellow rose, turning the corner to see (you fill in the blank)……….it is the simple things that just bring a smiles to a face.
And last night — in the midst of a sea of conversation with Barbara Barreda and Clarence Fisher, just such a simple thing occured. And that 2 minute sound byte totally brought smiles to everyone’s faces.
We were asking BB and CF how their classes keep in touch during their “THIN WALLS” project. They mentioned chat, instant messaging, email, yugma, etc etc etc. Then Clarence started talking about Google Pages and how he created a page and shared them with students. I honestly am unsure of what he said for the next few minutes because I was thinking “how does he do that?”
And as soon as he stopped talking, it was exactly what I asked. And he explained.
You need to create a google account (he has one for each student) and go to igoogle.
On the far left, you will see the home button and if you hover to the right, you will see a drop down arrow and you need to choose ADD.
You will be prompted to name the tab and then you can add all sorts of widgets to it.
This is what I created as a possible template:
and then you can share this (by typing in email addresses) and make this page available for all your students. You can add information, remove information, etc. Making it easy to collaborate in a variety of ways.
And to close the tab, just click on HOME and you return to your own individual home page. To return to the new tab, you can choose it from the navigation on the left.
(One question, who can add or subtract widgets — just the original creator — hmmm not sure. Also, if you choose a tab name that has already been created by someone else(s), you do have the option to bring in their content and use or not as you see fit!)
It was a great learning opportunity, Clarence and Barbara!! Thanks so much for sharing!!
Jennifer
Thanks for writing out the instructions. I didn’t know about this either and it really was a cool idea! (Great show last night!)
I think Protopage works the same way. And it’s also free.
Jen, I used a version of this last year with my students, and plan to do so again. I created an account with Google apps for my classroom so students could access work done at school from home. I created a student page and put a link to it on our class website. I added the widgets that were applicable to our classroom. I gave each child a login and password. From their student page, they could log in to their Google Apps (spreadsheet, word processor, presentation, etc.). At the time, I chose not to activate the email feature for security reasons. What is great about the apps feature, is that you can “share” or view a document with a student at the same time. This opens up a whole new world for collaborating with a student outside the classroom. If you haven’t done so, check it out.