Technology Talk - Start Pages
by Jennifer Bolton-Carls, Ed. D., NYSASBO President Elect / Over the last few months, I have received a lot of feedback from members who have read these articles. Some people say thank you for explaining new technologies in plain language, but the overwhelming majority of members say something like “I don’t have time to check Facebook, Twitter, wikis, websites, read online articles, check my email and still manage my office work.” My answer is always the same. The technologies I have highlighted are supposed to ease your stress by making your work day more efficient with less time than before needed to gather and share information. I shared the responses I was getting from members with Matt Cardinale from NYSASBO, and he thought it would be a good idea for me to write about personalized start pages. This topic will hopefully help members see how using technology can save time.
Personalized start pages are internet pages designed by the user and are usually set to be your default start page when you first open your web browser. The customized start page can organize in one place a wide variety of information and tools from across the web. This can include the news you want, updates from blogs you follow, your calendar of events, and an inbox showing your email. You can even add handy tools like task managers or a notepad for leaving yourself a reminder. It may take a little time to first set one up and customize it to suit your needs, but once you have a personalized start page, you have a single place to go on the web to see the information that matters most to you, all at a glance.
There are many popular start pages ready for you to use including Netvibes, iGoogle, Pageflakes and My Yahoo!. Since I had been using My Yahoo for years, I thought I would give another product a try. I chose Netvibes. In order to use Netvibes, one of the easiest pages, you need to access www.netvibes.com. Once there, the page will prompt you to set up an account with a username, password and email address. Within a matter of minutes, I had a page that showed me my Yahoo mail, the local weather, my Twitter updates, my Facebook updates, a search engine and news headlines. Netvibes will even ask for your interests, such as sports, stocks, shopping, music and games, in order to bring you the information you want. After choosing your interests, like stocks, you can customize the report to show only the stocks you care about. Other modules can be added based on your needs. For example, some people might want to add the yellow pages, some might want movie reviews, and others may want to see the top 10 YouTube videos. You also have the freedom to add RSS feeds. I included feeds from the NYSASBO and SED websites. This system gives you the flexibility to include only the information you want and need, as well as the ability to see it all in one place.
Netvibes and other personalized start pages are also being used in the educational setting. Teachers can set up a page that has all the necessary websites for students to do research. They can also set up the pages to show highlights of current events from credible sources like The Wall Street Journal and CBS News. Netvibes also allows people to share information with each other. Schools can create these communities to allow teachers to share information by posting homework assignments, class notes, test schedules or any other sort of information they feel is important. Lastly, educators can use these pages to communicate with students, parents, and other teachers.
Once you take a few minutes to set up your own personalized start page, you really only need to open this one page to reach your most critical information rather than taking the time to check multiple websites. Hopefully, after trying this technology, I’ll hear from members that we actually saved you some of that all too precious time.
