Thing #16

I decided to set up iGoogle as my customized start page.  I already had Gmail, used blogger, and had my RSS feed set up, so I thought having immediate access to all of this through my home page would be nice.  I have the weather, a calendar, spotlight YouTube videos, and I chose CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Times as front page links.  I also have "artist of the day" links.  I then clicked on "add gadgets" and added "to do list," local movie listings, and NPR news.  I was really pleased with my work and ready to make it permanent when I noticed a flash on the top of my page.  Apparently, iGoogle will be taken down as of Nov. 2013!  I had already completed the page so I decided to keep it, but I guess I'll only have a few months to enjoy it.  In following the link under 23things it was extremely easy to set it up, but not as easy to figure out how to actually make it my home page.  I opened a new tab and Googled: how do you..... I found a link that gave me step by step instructions based on the browser I was using.  This is definitely something I would not have gone to the trouble of doing if it had not been a part of 23things, but now that I have it I am enjoying it.  I had the same issue with Ta da as I did with iGoogle in that its being retired, but unlike iGoogle it's not signing up any new people, so I moved on to "Remember the Milk."  I liked that you can divide your task between personal, study and work.  I also liked that you can attach due dates and estimated time to complete.  You can also color code according of level of priority.  I see the possibility of using this tool to manage a busy schedule, but I think I'll have to spend a bit more time organizing how I want to set it up.  I went ahead and filled in reminders for each of the three tabs and linked it to my Gmail.  For the calender, of course, I check out Google calendar, simply because everything else I've done has been linked with Google.  I like that there is a small view of the entire month at the left and then the option to add a detailed agenda to the "day" tab, a less detailed schedule under "week", or some simple short reminders under "month."  So that I didn't limit myself to only Google features I also looked at Scryybe.  I liked the "work offline" feature.  I also liked that you could click on the day to see the details and click and drag to move your schedule around.  I really liked the "thought pad" that allows you to move ideas from the Internet to your calendar just as you would jot down ideas in an organizer.  Next I tried Mystickies--I even signed up for an account, but when I tried to install it onto my firefox, it said that it wasn't compatible.  I then decided to try chalksite, but also had no luck.  Finally, I tried Delicious.  I like the social bookmarking that we've looked at in our class and this one seems similar to Diigo and Pinit.  This is great way for teachers to share with other teachers as well as students.  It's also a great way for a teacher to tag a bunch of useful resources and easily find them later.