Web 2.0 Tools: Personal Portals

From CTLpedia

This hands-on workshop will introduce participants to personal portals, a web 2.0 technology that allows users to construct webpages made up of various different widgets/gadgets/pods that pull information from different parts of the internet. Attend this workshop to gain an understanding of what wikis are, where you may obtain a free wiki accounts, and how you might use wikis to better facilitate teaching and learning.

1 Outcomes
2 Web 2.0 Tools: Personalizing the Internet: iGoogle, Netvibes, & Pageflakes Workshop
3 Personal Portal Features
4 Specific Personal Portal Tools
5 How/Why Use Personal Portal Technologies
6 Resources and Links

Outcomes

After attending this workshop participants shall be able to:

Describe the main elements of personal portal tools.
Set-up a free, web-based personal portal accounts.
Outline what personal portals can do based on hands-on experience with the tool.
Discuss reasons for using personal portals to better facilitate teaching and learning and/or other work processes.
Identify particular challenges common to incorporating personal portals into courses.

Web 2.0 Tools: Personalizing the Internet: iGoogle, Netvibes, & Pageflakes Workshop

View the CTL CalendarWeb 2.0 Tools: Personalizing the Internet: iGoogle, Netvibes, & Pageflakes workshop is scheduled.

Personal Portal Features

Personal portals allow individuals to construct an internet browser homepage (default page) with tools and links that are relevant and regularly used. Most are private pages for the individual logging on, Pageflakes and Netvibes have “public” options that allow individuals to share their portal pages.

Common Features:

variety of widgets/flakes/nodes to imbed on the page
ability to make more than one page
ability to share with other users
ability to make public

Specific Personal Portal Tools

Google Homepage/iGoogle (http://www.google.com/ig)
MyYahoo (http://my.yahoo.com/)
Pageflakes (http://www.pageflakes.com/)
Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/)

How/Why Use Personal Portal Technologies

How might you use Personal Portals in Teaching?

Construct specific portal pages for course resource (consider making public for students to access as well)
Have students construct their own content related resource page.

How might your students use Personal Portals in their lives?

More readily keeping tabs (and links) available for internet use
Have access to the same internet “homepage” on public computers

How might you use Personal Portals in Scholarship?

Construct specific portal pages for individual projects to keep track of your work, internet resources, etc.
Use portals to share online references for public presentations.
Use portals as starting points for presentations with a lot of online content.