Nuts and Bolts #4 - Personalized Homepages in the Classroom

This is a new piece of the puzzle for me this year. In the past, I've never required students to keep or design a personalized homepage. But I think the technology has advanced far enough to make them useful for classrooms.

I've spent time thinking in the past about iGoogle and Pageflakes and I wasn't sure which I was going to use. Pageflakes seemed easy to use and design and I liked their idea of pagecasting, where I could design a page that people could subscribe to. But thinking about how much I would use this technology, I've decided to go with Google. As well, as I get into using Google documents and spreadsheets more in my classroom, the chance for my students to have one single login page which will let them access these office applications, an RSS reader, and a personalized information portal for themselves is just too good to resist. Google wins.

My plan for the beginning of this year is to have the kids in my class register for a Google account, allowing them to access online documents, set up feeds for their reader, and then also set up a personalized homepage. As the year progresses and we find ourselves involved in a series of enquiries, I want each student to use their homepage as an information portal for themselves. For example, if we are involved in doing a project on current scientific issues, I could first locate several information sources for my students which they could subscribe to using RSS and then place these feeds on their homepage. They could also find their own sources of information to subscribe to and add. But as well as these things, the students might be working with students from several other classes around the globe on a single topic. To help them communicate, the students could place the RSS feed for a wiki they are working on  with their partners on their homepage allowing them to see all of the updates. They could subscribe to the feed from a del.icio.us account, allowing them to see all of the resources their entire network of learners has collected. They could place the feed for a Technorati watchlist here, feeds from the blogs of their partners, a project calendar designed by all of the students working on one topic, as well as Twitter updates to keep current on what each member of their group is doing that particular day.

This page would basically become an at-a-glance portal for the students and the current project they are working on. As well, if they are involved in more then one inquiry at a time, they could simply add another tab to their homepage, allowing this same thing to occur as many times as needed. I'm hoping that, over the course of the year, just as a blog becomes a writing portfolio, this page will serve as an artifact of their research processes.

A new technology in my classroom, but one I'm hoping will be valuable.

technorati tags:igoogle, homepages, twitter, del.icio.us, information

Comments

[Colette Cassinelli]

I am planning on doing the same thing with my computer and journalism students this year. I went to school yesterday and logged on as a student to make sure I didn't have any issues using iGoogle. Our school doesn't allow students to change their homepage so we'll have to bookmark the portal.

How are you planning to deal with students adding widgets to their homepage that aren't appropriate for school like games, YouTube, or jokes? I want to keep the focus on News, RSS, Google Reader, and Google Docs. Any ideas?

[Wesley Fryer]

Colette: I would suggest that students be permitted to create separate pages for explicitly non-school related things. As long as the content is not offensive or disrespectful, I would think it would be fine for students to include joke links, cartoons, YouTube videos, etc. The line there is clearly subjective, however, and will likely be crossed by students. Definitions of things like "obscenity" are made and defended in the courts, however, and it seems reasonable for students to grapple with the somewhat muddy waters of what is appropriate or inappropriate. I think students need to view their homepages, like their social networking presences, as a reflection on themselves both now and in the future. Steve Dembo's post a few weeks ago titled "Have you Googled yourself today?" gets at some of the issues I think will be raised here. I think what both you and Clarence are proposing sounds excellent. Helping students develop their own learning portals and keeping the portal current so that it supports ongoing studies as well as interests is brilliant.

http://www.techlearning.com/blog/2007/08/have_you_googled_yourself_toda.php

[Clarence Fisher]

I would mostly agree with what Wesley added to the conversation above, with the additional thought that it really depends on your situation. If you think it will cause problems for you and your students if they have non - school related things on their page, simply get them to remove them if you find them. The kids' pages will definitely need to be supervised and I meet with the kids in my class regularly on a 1:1 basis about their blogs, RSS accounts, etc. If you do not want them to subscribe to non educational widgets, I would just make it part of your rules and expectations and then hold the kids accountable (including taking away their computer priviliges if needed) if they decide not to follow your rules.

[Diane Hammond]

I'm thinking about widgets in a new light these days. My son is IT director for our town. The Public Utilities Commission here is using a Mambo server. My son installed an FAQ widget as part of the web site. A hacker Googled the line of code that has a security issue and allows hackers to obtain the user/password list. From the search results he found servers hosting Mambo. On the PUC site, he was able to login as Admin and completely replace the web site. My son fixed the issue, but it makes me wonder now about all of the neat widgets we're using on our blog sites. I've got several on my own. How secure are they?