PageFlakes for Education

Definition

Pageflakes is an Ajax-based start page similar to My Yahoo!, iGoogle, Netvibes and Microsoft Live. The site is organized into tabs, each tab containing user-selected modules called Flakes containing information such as RSS feeds, Calendar, Notes, Web search, weather forecast, del.icio.us bookmarks, flickr photos and user-created modules. 

Here's a basic example of how you could set up a teacher page.  This format would be best as a class "homepage".  I provide other templated examples in the sections below.

Overview

This wiki page gives a very basic overview of what a PageFlake is & How it can be used in education.  PageFlakes launched in late 2005 & has been evolving ever since.  They now offer PageFlakes for Students & Teachers, which offers the same environment, but you get a different group of elements to start with (and it's just one click + a sign up if you are happy with it).  Heather Sullivan thinks that this "special purpose" startup could be improved a bit. E.g. writing tools (Pageflake's little blog, the notepad) and storage tools are missing. They also need to add Flakes to interface with other productivity tools (e.g. interactive concept maps, reference managers, etc.).  These tweeks should be soon realized, as the PageFlakes team seems very dedicated to making the Education-based startup as useful as powerful as possible.

PageFlakes in Education

PageFlakes is currently (May 2007) the only well known webtop that allows you to share pages. This opens up some possibilities for teachers which we discuss also in places like personal learning environments or e-learning 2.0. For example:

• You can build start pages for your students. These start pages may include widgets to search information, information feeds, etc. plus links to other on-line services used in class, e.g. a mediawiki.
• Your students can build "themed" pages, e.g. a form of digital storytelling
• It's a small scale personal learning environment. A teacher can encourage students to build a sort of private information portal + shared learning e-portfolio.
• It's an environment that can be used to drive activity-based and project-oriented teaching. It's an alternative to teaching with a C3MS that in the long run should have more potential. In the short run you gain from not having to install your portal (which has become an increasing hassle because of all the inherent security problems PHP applications seem to have).

How-to-For-Teachers

Good Flakes to Get Started

Links

Using Pageflakes as Student Portal

Using Pageflakes for Digital Storytelling

Blog