Category: Webtools

This is a great idea for kids. Use one of these free start pages to put everything important there for your child that’s internet-based. Mine includes oft-used websites, blog sites, a To Do list, search tools, email, a calendar of events, pictures of interest, rss feeds of interest, weather, news, a graffiti wall and more. Yours will be different, more geared toward summer activities. Ask your child what s/he’d like there. Maybe sponge activities (internet sites that take just a few minutes to soak up empty time).

I used protopage.com (Protopage is your own personal page, which you can access from any computer or mobile phone), but you can use netvibes. Start pages are an outreach of the ever-more-popular social networking. Most search engines offer them also. They all have a huge library of custom fields to individualize any home page. And, they’re all simple. Don’t be intimidated.

When you get yours set up, on the To Do list, put what the child should do to start each computer time. This gives them a sense of independence, adultness, as they get started while you’re wrapping something else up.

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Drop by every Friday to discover what wonderful website my classes and parents loved this week. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of yours as they are of mine. (more…)

Drop by every weekend to discover what wonderful website my classes and parents loved this week. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of yours as they are of mine.

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Do you ever wonder who would sit in front of a computer and post articles, day after day, week after week, with no idea how many people are reading them or if they’ll ever make any money doing this? Are they frustrated journalists? Desperate housewives? Just plain bored and in need of a platform?

I’ve got the answers for you. I write five blogs as well as columns for this newspaper and Technology Integration in Education. I’m not paid for any of them (not a salary as a corporate blogger is), yet I happily do it. My reasons are varied, but I’ve been at it for several years, so it seems to be more than a passing fad.Here’s the breakdown:

• If you blog, you’re probably 35-45, or in a broader sense, 25-55 (check for me) (more…)

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy! (more…)