It turns out that my iGoogle page was already the first step. I had set one up basically to monitor my Gmail account, since it is not one I use for anything except on-line subscriptions, including Facebook. I wanted a shortcut for seeing if there was any "action" on my Facebook page without having to log into Facebook every time, then having large amounts of time sucked from my life as I started playing around, procrastinating on all the other mom stuff I needed to be doing. There is also a CNN feed that I liked looking at because I don't get a daily newspaper, and it was a way to see what was happening globally.
For this class, I added the RSS feed function to the page, which I didn't have before, and also added this blog in Blogger. I have to admit that now that I've done this, I can't imagine not having the feeds. Even after this class is done, I can choose to continue following people's progress and ideas, or find new paths to information. I really like Joyce Valenza for practical applications, and I still like David Jake's blog for the philosophical. Meredith Farkas is another person whose perspective I've come to value. At the risk of sounding brown-nosy, I really appreciate the resources that Eileen posts, and I wish her D2L pages were available after the class ends as I end up forwarding them to people who would find them relevant.
While I added Twitter to my RSS feed online, I have to say that I probably won't use this tool regularly. I don't need information 24/7 in 140 character bites, but I do appreciate having access to information when I want it.
Helping people to develop a PLN like mine would be easy in a school environment if the home page were automatically set to iGoogle. Ours, however, is set to the school's homepage, so the iGoogle page would have to be a bookmark, I'm guessing. Any other thoughts on how to do this?
I have also asked Eileen how we could have the links to the resources that she has provided in her D2L pages. (She said there was a way.) I also hope we can keep the Delicious bookmarks going.
ReplyDeleteThose del.icio.us bookmarks will continue as long as the del.icio.us site is up and running. I'll try to remember to keep using the tags for this class (web2.0 won't be hard, I'll just have to remember UWWLibmedia). If everyone else does the same thing, we can continue to add to it.
ReplyDeleteTeachers could have iGoogle as a link on their page, but it is definitely much easier to have it as the homepage. If you don't want it as personalized, you could create a NetVibes page or a Pageflakes page that was generic and could be used by all, but I think that kind of defeats the Personal part of a PLN.
I'm finding that many of the people I follow on blogs are now using Twitter to link back to their blog pages. I've heard some say that Twitter will replace the concept of RSS feeds, but to me it is still an extra step to both blog and Twitter where RSS feeds come automatically from the blog.