BP2 iGoogle PLE

Well, here is my post for this assignment. This was posted on time, but went to another older blog I had set up on Blogger some years back...thus, all the glitches of this system came into play! Hoping all is well now:-).

This assignment was a learning experience on a number of levels. When I first submitted this assignment to my blog, it did feel like it was missing something! And, I was! I did not

realize that there was an "Assets" PDF that gave instructions until I spoke with with the instructor today. This was an important, and key, piece of this assignment. So, yes, I was missing something! Now I will know to look for "Assets" for further instruction when working on assignments.

Meeting with Rena by phone this morning to go over how to set up IGoogle was so helpful and eye opening! What an incredibly useful tool! I have so needed to find a way to manage all of the things I am doing online! As I get more familiar with this tool, and as it becomes second nature to use it, it will be a powerful, and much needed, tool for me to navigate through all of the online aspects of my business.

I am excited about what I have been learning so far about PLEs (Personal Learning Environments). It is essential that students of today are networked online and know how to navigate the Internet. I love that IGoogle offers a place to capture and house many of the tools we, and our students, will be using.

As I worked through setting up the basics and getting started on iGoogle, I was thankful for being introduced to this tool that lets me organize and access all of my links, emails, blogs and other tools all in one place. It will make life so much easier and save valuable time also.

While, in some ways, this assignment was challenging for me, as seems to be the case when introduced to most technology for the first time, I was able to get started with iGoogle and I look forward to expanding my ability to navigate my way through it and, not too far down the line, to easily utilize this powerful organizational tool.

Below are the tabs I set up for my Home tab, FSO/Ar tab and Reosurces Tab. I also added gadgets for Hubble Telescope photos, ITunes Top Ten Songs, and a weather gadget

What a difference from my first attempt of this assignment! It feels good to be 'getting' it. I encourage any of you reading this blog post to not give up. Getting the basics of iGoogle in place will prove to be well worth it in the end.

BP2 iGoogle PLE

This assignment was a learning experience on a number of levels. When I first submitted this assignment to my blog, it did feel like it was missing something! And, I was! I did not

realize that there was an "Assets" PDF that gave instructions until I spoke with with the instructor today. This was an important, and key, piece of this assignment. So, yes, I was missing something! Now I will know to look for "Assets" for further instruction when working on assignments.

Meeting with Rena by phone this morning to go over how to set up IGoogle was so helpful and eye opening! What an incredibly useful tool! I have so needed to find a way to manage all of the things I am doing online! As I get more familiar with this tool, and as it becomes second nature to use it, it will be a powerful, and much needed, tool for me to navigate through all of the online aspects of my business.

I am excited about what I have been learning so far about PLEs (Personal Learning Environments). It is essential that students of today are networked online and know how to navigate the Internet. I love that IGoogle offers a place to capture and house many of the tools we, and our students, will be using.

As I worked through setting up the basics and getting started on iGoogle, I was thankful for being introduced to this tool that lets me organize and access all of my links, emails, blogs and other tools all in one place. It will make life so much easier and save valuable time also.

While, in some ways, this assignment was challenging for me, as seems to be the case when introduced to most technology for the first time, I was able to get started with iGoogle and I look forward to expanding my ability to navigate my way through it and, not too far down the line, to easily utilize this powerful organizational tool.

Below are the tabs I set up for my Home tab, FSO/Ar tab and Reosurces Tab. I also added gadgets for Hubble Telescope photos, ITunes Top Ten Songs, and a weather gadget

What a difference from my first attempt of this assignment! It feels good to be 'getting' it. I encourage any of you reading this blog post to not give up. Getting the basics of iGoogle in place will prove to be well worth it in the end.

BP3_BOLT: A More Interesting Way to Share

In searching through various Web 2.0 tools, I came across a great program called BOLT that I want to tell you about. And, the good news is, this is an extremely simple program to use! If you currently have a website, when you sign up for BOLT, it allows you to make a copy of your website and then make changes on that page that you may share with your online community, post to social networking sites, etc. You can rearrange your photos change words, headlines, etc. You need no html or web design skills to utilize this tool. This tool allows you to add comments to pages and make your pages even more suited to the audience you intend to share it with. For educators, this is a way you can add comments, move things on pages, and integrate information you want to teach students. It is also a tool that students may easily utilize to add their own creativity, comments, and photos to websites. As an educator, you might design a website especially for this purpose, giving students a basic design to begin with and allowing their creativity to take over from there.

Here are some of the things you may do with BOLT:

For me, this will be a great tool to personalize websites and sales pages that I make to specific audiences. It will allow me the opportunity to very easily personalize my websites to talk to the people I am sharing it with. This program is so simple to use.

For example, in just a few minutes, I was able to copy a picture of my current website, www.HeartWealthCreation.com into BOLT. Here is what the website looks like. Notice the wording in the first line that starts with "Donna, I am ready...

With the tools in BOLT, I was very easily able to personalize this to direct it to my Full Sail University classmates. Notice the first line now that reads: Hello Full Sail University classmates:

This opens up a world of possibilities and the best part is, this program is so simple to use.

I encourage you to check it out. Choose a website to copy and to get creative with. This copy does not affect the original website or change any of your copy or code on your original website.

I'd love to hear from you as to how your experiments in BOLT went and also to hear how you might utilize this in your profession.