Personal+Dashboards

A Personal Dashboard is a “control panel” for you to manage your online activity. Using your Personal Dashboard, you can go through e-mails, check your local weather, get the date and time, check your local news, and check national or even __world news__. Personal Dashboards allow you to personalize the way you view all of your information, you can select themes and set/change e-mail passwords. There are many different ways to personalize your very own Dashboard. Along with having different themes, you can also set up different tabs for different interests or you can set up you tabs by what you visit on a daily, weekly, and a monthly basis. Your tabs may also be where you go to find your e-mail, weather, and other various interests.

 Some examples of Personal Dashboards are iGoogle, Netvibes, and Pageflakes. Pageflakes was first launched in 2005 and stopped operation in January 2012. Pageflakes was set up to have tabs that were called ‘flakes’. Like many other Personal Dashboards, the user would personalize these ‘flakes’ to contain the information that they chose. Pageflakes is said to have had more than 130,000 ‘pagecasts’. Netvibes also has tabs similar to Pageflakes where the user personalized the data that is presented on their Dashboard, however, Netvibes is ‘multi-lingual’. Using Netvibes, users can personalize and share what they wish with other users, and are given the option on what they wish to share with the public. Users on Netvibes can also take advantage of a built in audio player along with choosing themes for their Personal Dashboard. iGoogle, is previously known as Google Personalized Homepage. Like Pageflakes, it was launched in 2005. Since 2007 iGoogle is available in 42 different languages and is available in 70 different countries. It is estimated that over 7 million people were using iGoogle. iGoogle features many different ‘gadgets’ for their users, some examples of these ‘gadgets’ are; “Framed Photo”, “GoogleGram”, “Daily Me”, “Free Form”, and “Daily Literary Quote”. Like Netvibes, iGoogle allows its users to choose a theme. In 2008, they altered some of the features that would be on iGoogle.

Here is a list of some Personal Dashboard sites: [|www.google.com/ig] [|www.netvibes.com/] [|www.my.yahoo.com/]

__Classroom uses: __
There are many quick tools at the teacher's fingertips but two of the most useful ways to incorporate IGoogle into a classroom would be during reading and research. A teacher can set her computer dashboard to bring up the research section of IGoogle so that there is no hassle and __students__ can begin research right away. On the research page there are various research methods that students can or cannot choose to use. They can search terms, sort by terms that are used, they can look for articles in the newspaper, and they can also filter their research by their reading level. By filtering the reading level students can search the same topic but they can filter it by their reading level and be able to comprehend it. There are so many differences in reading levels for today's students and this is a way for all students to be on an equal playing field without some students feeling alienated or inadequate because they can't read as well as others. Many of my students during student teaching had a hard time figuing out if boosks were within their reading level. This program allows for students to seach a book and figure out the reading level by doing an advanced search by entering their reading level as well.

The dictionary tool on the Igoogle dashboard would be great for students who are individually reading or trying to figure out definitions from a text book. After they have used context clues and looked in the glossary, students would be able to walk back to the computer where Igoogle is set up, type in the word to find its meaning and continue reading. This would be a great tool to have set up in the classroom during silent reading because it is not disruptive and can be done individually.

The measure conversions tool would be a fun interactive way to hypothesize and analyze. Students could measure something using standard measuring and then hypothesize what it would be in metric. It might even be a good math activity to find the difference and try to calculate the conversion on their own. Since many people like and are fasinated with money, it would be another great idea to hook kids into math by doing currency conversions. This would also play into multiculturalism in the classroom.

These are just a few of the ways in which someone could use IGoogle in the classroom. There are so many tools on the website that could be used in the classroom as well as outside. It would be wonderful to see a teacher use this inside and outside their classroom to manage their life and their students.

Below is a link to a youtube video to help get you started on your Igoogle account.

[|IGoogle Set up]

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">**These are some of the elements that are included in a personal dashboard. This is beneficial for the teacher, other staff, parents, and students. Everyone can be connected and can see what is going on with homework assignments, tests, upcoming activities, or letters from the teacher.**

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Calendar** - The Calendar link combines all of your events, meetings and assignments into your personal calendar based on your group memberships (classroom pages and other activity fusion pages). You can also include personal appointments. The personal calendar is only visible to the logged in user. For parents and guardians, there is a separate calendar within the My Family link that is used for viewing the events, assignments, and activities for your children. School and district calendar events are not included in this calendar.  <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Files** - The My Files link allows you to upload documents, often referred to as a “Digital Locker.” Files can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. Although all logged-in users have this service, this is intended for students as a means to safely upload and store electronic files. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> **Message Center** - The Message Center link is available to all users. Teachers can message parents and students, and students and parents can message teachers. Teachers who have activated their FusionTools profile will not see a My Message Center Link.  <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Multimedia Blog** – This link is only available for Faculty/Staff who have activated their profile. It contains links to Blogs, Photo Slideshows, Videos, Podcasts, Wikis and more. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Personal Settings** - Users can personalize select account information or, with a faculty or staff account, create a public profile. Under no circumstances can users manually reset their __passwords__, change their parent-child affiliations, or update critical contact information. All formal changes to contact information are handled via each individual’s school administration office through the district’s Service Center. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> **Create** - Teachers can click once to add information to their pages or to create a blog or discussion __topic__ for their students.  <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**FusionPages** – The FusionPage fly-out menu allows users to view and access all of their affiliated FusionPages. This will include classes, clubs, committees, and athletics. Class membership is controlled directly from the District’s student information database (ESIS) and membership changes must be managed by __working__ directly with your school’s administration. Other optional FusionPages are managed via personal opt in/out methods.  <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Teachers** - The Teachers fly-out menu provides direct links to the Profile pages of other Faculty/Staff where the Faculty/Staff is a member of any of those FusionPages.  <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Reports** – Faculty and staff can access the Reports tab which provides classroom information about site user activity, classroom page activity, and discussion topics.  <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**My Family** - This link will only appear for Parent/Guardians. This link will allow parents to view all of their children’s classes and calendar information from one central location regardless of the school(s) attended. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Code name** – Students will see a code name listed under their name for example “Pine Penguin” in their dashboards. This code name is used for student participation and commenting. Other students can only view the code name of the commenter while teachers can view the code name and student name.  <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Recent Activity** - The Recent Activity link appears to all users. Clicking on the link displays a page with any recent activity pertaining to your SchoolFusion user account. The information contained within this page is the same information that is contained within the Recent Activity Email and RSS feed.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Home work assignments
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Class announcements
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Class/Group Calendar Events
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The addition of new Class/ Group files
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Blog entries by teachers of groups that the user is a member of
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Responses to any comments that the user has posted
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Message Center Notifications

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">ADDED BY BRITTANY GRABEL! :)