Thing 12

The first Google tool that I chose to explore was iGoogle. It was very easy to set up and it makes a great homepage. It's almost like the Google reader where it gives you a lot of information all in one place. On the page, It tells me the date, the weather and news stories. I have also have websites I use a lot like youtube and facebook on the left side. One thing I love about iGoogle is all the different gadgets. I went a little crazy and added quite a few of them. I have one that shows me the show times of movies around clarksville. I have a gadget that's a countdown to my birthday. I have a daily bible verse and quotes gadget. I even have a funny cat photos gadget, but my favorite by far is the self-esteem booster gadget that told me my shoes were fabulous! Although I do love my iGoogle, I can't see a purpose for using it in the classroom.

http://www.google.com/ig?hl

My experience making the Google Calendar was a little bit more difficult. I didn't like the default calendar where it showed one week at a time and you had to put a start and end time for everything. It's not something that I could see myself using often. I would rather just use the calendar on my phone or write things down in a planner. It could be helpful for a teacher to keep up with things such as test dates or meetings or parent teacher conferences. The calendar can send a notification to your phone or email reminding you about your events. Or you can put it as a gadget on your iGoogle like I did, this way you can see your events every time you get online.

https://www.google.com/calendar/render?gsessionid=OK