Online identity and personalised start pages - Pageflakes

Pageflakes blog posts navigation
Originally uploaded by Steven Parker.

Blogger - For sharing content
Flickr - For sharing photos I like
Del.icio.us- For sharing websites I like
43 Things- For connecting with people who are interested in learning, doing the same things as me.
My start page, Pageflakes- Pulling them all together.

By using 'Personalised Start Pages' I can pull together my online identity for work and play. This is done by bringing together blog posts, pictures, videos and rss feeds into one online page. Pageflakes is just one of the available user friendly and free 'personalised start page' Web2.0 programmes. I found out about pageflakes from the TALO group, TALO uses Protopage, another 'personalised start page', to pull together all the information relating to the group into one space. Another popular start page is suprglu (Allows customisation of look and feel).

Reasons why I like Pageflakes:

• It allows the incorpration of blog posts in a nice navigational structure similar to a Learning Management System.
• It is more user friendly and accessible, users with basic level skills can easily pull together RSS feeds using 'Pageflake add content' as apposed to customising blog templates.
• It comes with a variety of custom widgets for easily incorporating cool features such as photos from Flickr and videos from You Tube.
• It is extendable and customisable, with widgets being created by a community of developers.
• It can be used for teaching classes by allow the creation of open pages or closed pages which are invite only.
• It can be used for networked learning with colleagues, for example including videos developed by peers (Leigh Blackall) in you tube.
• It can be used for for project management including widgets which provide features such as links to 'Writely' project documents and project checklists.

Pageflakes doesn't appear to allow customising the look and feel to any great extent yet but thats ok... I like it, a great accessible, flexible product for educators, students and managers to pull together their online identity for teaching and learning online and deliver open content with blogs.