Thing #12 (Google Not Just for Searching)

iGoogle is a very neat Google tool that gives you your own personal homepage where you can add just about anything to your homepage. My iGoogle homepage allows me to see if I have any new emails, RSS feeds that are unread, weather forecast, calendar, horoscope, and my notebook all in one place. You can customize your page by changing the theme and adding applications that are interesting to you. This saves me a lot of time because I can just visit my iGoogle page to see if I have any unread emails, unread RSS feeds, and even check the weather all at the same place. Students could use this in school to become more organized by setting up their homepage to suit their needs. The students can use the calendar to keep track of homework and assignments coming up and display that on there homepage. Also there are a lot of educational gadgets that the students can post on their homepage and if they want they can learn a different word of the day in different languages or learn to use sign language, just to name a few.

Google notebook is now one of my favorite Google tools to use. I am sure by reading some of my previous blogs you can tell that I love to cook. I am constantly looking for new healthy recipes to make. If I find a recipe that I like I use to just send it to me email and store it in a folder. The recipes that I store in my email folder often get lost. With Google Notebook I can copy and paste everything and post it in my notebook. I made my notebook public to share with others. Feel free to take a look at my Healthy Recipes notebook and maybe you can get an idea on what to make for dinner. I think this would be a great tool to use for educational purposes too. Students can research topics and keep everything that they find on the web in one place. This will save students time by not having to keep visiting the same websites over and over again because they will have all there resources in one place. I also like the fact that they can share there notes because the teacher can check up on the students research progress to make sure the student is on the right track.

I was never aware of all the tools that Google had before taking this class and now I feel more knowledgeable and organized just by using Google tools. I always thought Google was a great search engine but now I couldn't live without all the tools that Google offers.