Has this ever happened to you? You’ve finished a unit/lesson/project with your students, and two weeks later, as you’re looking through your filing cabinet/files, you find something that you totally forgot you had and could have used it x number of weeks ago? It goes something like this: “WHAT?!? When did I ever get this? I totally forgot!” So, you say, “Next year, I am DEFINITELY going to remember this!” and never keep your promise?
Sometimes it can be like that with online resources. You find something that is SO cool and SO awesome, bookmark it on your computer at home, or your computer at work, your laptop…you get the picture. At school, you may say, “What was that website again?” or may forget what computer you saved the website. By this time some may be saying, “What a sad, sad, man.” Think what my wife goes through…..
How do you organize your resources for quick and easy retrieval?
Two of my favorite sites to organize are PortaPortal and Delicious. The two sites function a little differently.
Portaportal enables you to organize websites by categories that students, friends, and colleagues can access by entering as guests. For example, the art teacher and I worked on a project of, “What if an artist had a Facebook page today?” We made a portaportal for students to access to research their artists of sites that we already picked out.
The other site is Delicious. Download their toolbar to your computer, and everytime you come across a website that you like, you “tag” it. A window will pop up and you type in pertinent information.
Give it a try–see me if you have any questions.
