K12 Learning 2.0

Pageflakes – what a great description of this tool!  It was fascinating to search all the different topics within Pageflakes for pagecasts that were already created.  I know you indicated the search feature wasn’t the best but I was able to access a variety of topics of interest fairly easily.  The variety of topics, the ability to customize/personalize your own page, the current-ness of the content you can provide is all very appealing.

I created a Pageflakes page on Copyright.  It helped tremendously to have the template available to see the variety of choices appropriate for the K-12 environment.  I added several RSS feeds – U S Copyright Office included – as well as a podcast link too besides bookmarks I already had.  Chose my own theme and moved my “pieces” around…I haven’t made it public yet – it’s still a work in progress.  Have some other materials I’m evaluating before I consider adding to my page.  I want to use it for the Information Literacy class I teach – we begin another session in early June – so my plan is to have it ready for that….I’ll add it to my training page on Copyright.

My uses of Pageflakes will be more for the professional learning environment – using it to provide resources to class participants or fellow media specialists on a variety of topics.  I can see a  media specialist using Pageflakes as a learning tool for students as well as a “hook” for the school’s media center page.  I would include on my school media center page photos of activities in the media center, Delicious bookmarks, a place for surveys (e’g. What new magazines should the media center acquire for 2009), feeds to area and national newspapers, calendar of library events and latest print award winners to name a few.

As a teaching tool for students, I would collaborate with classroom teachers on their standards-based assignments as well as current topics of interest (e.g. Environmental Science, 2008 Election, Diseases, Swine Flu/Peanut Butter) and provide RSS feeds, podcasts, links to authorative journals as well as bookmarks, etc. on Pageflakes.

I found creating a page very easy…….the choices you can add are unbelievable……for me, I would have to do a storyboard of the possible “choices” I’d want to include on my page on my particular topic before I would actually create the page………..I’d want to be sure I had the content I wanted and needed included on the page…and really decide do I need Post-it Notes, Word Pad, Calendar, etc.