Aggregated pages was a term I had never heard before so I felt a bit hesitant about this assignment. I viewed the two pages offered to us Netvibes, and protopage and simply because I liked the look of Netvibes better I thought that is was the direction I was going to head. Well, I started to use it and it was confusing, I couldn’t really figure out to use it quickly, and plus it indicated that it would be a trial offer making me think that I would have to pay in the future. So I quickly moved to protopage and after a few guess and checks, I found it very easy to use. I was able to add the required parts and some additional widgets of my choice. The only one that seemed a bit frustrating to add was the YouTube links and several classmates offered feedback on our discussion board to help with that. I will say at first I didn’t like it not having many options to personalize and how plain it seemed, but now I do. Too much business, too much cute font, etc can sometimes get in the way of the effectiveness of a tool. One negative thing I can say about protopage is that if I have more than one page, I have to have more than one login. I would prefer to log in once and be able to access all of my pages, but that is really a very minor complaint.
Click the pic for a link to my ETEC527 protopage.
I can see the advantages of making a page like this with a home base for everything I might need for a number of things like something I am teaching, classes I am taking, or just for personal interest I like to keep up with. I can certainly see using resources like this with my students as a place for classroom information, a way to give students a place for items to practice or study, or a place that has different sites that are valuable for research. After viewing the example given to us of a 4th-grade teacher, I made one for my students that includes what we are studying right now in math. My hope is that I will continue to add different tabs to it to include what we are studying.
Click below to link to one I started for my classroom.
I enjoy learning about resources in class that I can literally implement immediately with ease and this is one that I can use quickly with my students and they have access to it, unlike the previous two things we have put together, twitter and youtube.
EDTech 