Pageflakes for Educators
Last Jan 23rd, thanks to a kind invitation by Vance Stevens and Nelba Quintana, I had the chance to share an informal discussion on the potential of Pageflakes for Educators with colleagues who were attending the “Multiliteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments” workshop during TESOL EVO 2009. This was my first online presentation, and I felt naturally nervous, but my hosts’ incredible support, and the warmth of those who made a special effort to join us certainly contributed to making it a memorable experience for me! Basically, the discussion turned around 3 main ideas, namely, how educators can use Pageflakes (and similar tools, such as Netvibes or Protopage) for three different purposes: as a startpage, for lifestreaming or as an incredibly easy tool to create personalised sites for different classes.
You can now re-live the session (slides, audio and text chat, all synchronized) here:
(thanks, Vance, for sharing this recorded version!)
Or simply watch the slideshow below:
A few afterthoughts:
- Pageflakes seems to outdo other options in terms of customisation options (themes and layout) and widgets available. It also allows us to create as many private pages as we need, whereas other tools apparently limit this to just one.
- On the dark side: Pageflakes team have been very quiet lately… Apparently, they started twittering on Jan 11th, 2008, but they never updated their status after that. I sent them a direct message just before the presentation, but got no reply. Perhaps it’s just someone using their name?
Besides, their Twitter flake has not been allowing signing-in for weeks… just a sad coincidence??? - More worrying: while I was AFK, on a citybreak, Pageflakes was reported to be down for over 3 days. A member of WebheadsInAction mentioned twitters they were moving servers, but rumours went around they might be closing down soon. I hope it’s not true!!!
Once again, thanks everyone for sharing our learning!And a biiiiig hug to the inspiring teachers (esp. Nina Lyulkun and Mary Hillis) who encouraged me to look further into this tool by leading an enriching discussion at Learning with Computers during 2008!
Gladys
Ah! Of course, you’re all invited to visit my Pageflake: http://www.pageflakes.com/gladysbaya.
Online communities, Presentations, Teachers and technology, Web 2.0 | Comments (6)6 Responses to “Pageflakes for Educators”
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Dear Gladys:
Your presentation was really good. Thank you for your participation in Multiliteracies EVO session 2009!
I have opened my own pageflakes but cannot manage it yet. I hope I will meet you sometime online to ask for HELP! LOL
A big hug from La Plata,
Nelba Quintana
Dear Gladys, how wonderful. Your presentation was very clear and well organized, with so many resources. Even if you said you were nervous, it did not show. You took care of doubts and comments in the audience and seemed very relaxed. Congratulations on your first online presentation and I am sure there would be many more to come.
Cariños, Berta
Pageflakes is alive and well. Yes – we had a serious outage a couple weeks ago related to a data-center migration that didn’t go as planned. However, we are now in a nice new data-center, a faster network, and upgraded servers. We are here for the long haul and are committed to improving the product.
Hello Gladys:
I’ve started my site in pageflakes and it’s still under construction. Your pageflakes is really great!!! And so inspiring!!!
Thanks for sharing.
Ana
It’s so lucky for me to find your blog! So shocking and great! Just one suggestion: It will be better and easier to follow if your blog can offer rrs subscription service.
Glad to meet you, Christian! There’s indeed an option for you to subscribe to my blog: you’ll find a direct link in the sidebar on the right; it’s the third bullet under “CONTACT ME!” – namely, “Entries RSS“. You can also choose to subscribe to all comments by clicking on the bullet right below that one, “Comments RSS“.
Keep in touch!
Gladys