My latest Web 2.0 foray is the use of Pageflakes to replace my existing bellwork that I use in the classroom. Pageflakes is a customizable webpage that you can use as a home page or just as a housing spot to allow information to come to you rather than search for it each day. After considering the possibilities, I decided Pageflakes might make a great daily warehouse for much of the bellwork or information that I'm trying to disemminate to my students each day. It took a little time, but I explored different age appropriate widget to include in a pageflakes site.
My pageflakes page includes: The weather, a countdown until the end of school, an anything flake that I update each day with the Bellwork, another anything flake that provides which day it is (we rotate on a 4 day cycle), a calendarhub rss feed indicating important district events, a quote of the day and a child appropriate joke of the day. www.pageflakes.com
The students (grade six) LOVE looking at the bellwork on the smartboard to see the joke of the day and quote of the day. Many peek and comment on the weather. The important factor here is that they LOOK at the bellwork and start their day in their seats.
On a clever side note--for the TRULY technologically astute, I take my weekly lesson plans and created a daily blog out of them. This blog is scheduled as a daily post. In pageflakes, an RSS feed captures the daily lesson plan and when I log in in the morning--voila' there are my lesson plans for the day!!
If you've read this, please let me know--I'd be happy to answer questions!
