WHS Project: Technology

This is another of Carolyn’s blogs posted on her Not So Distant Blog:

Thanks for the great workshop Joel!   We had several questions about the personalized Google Home page that we talked about a few weeks ago, so I wanted to post some specific instructions.

Go to Google.com.   In the top right corner, you’ll notice a link to Sign in.
If you don’t have a Google account, look on the bottom right where it says: Don’t have a Google Account?
Create an account now

Create your account.  I recommend using your school email so that you can have email alerts, etc, sent to you on campus.  (You can also create two different accounts, one for home, one for here.)

Go back to the main Google page.  In the top right corner, it now has a link to “Personalized home.”  Click there and you will see a new home page for Google with links, calendars, etc, on it.   To modify that page, use the link that says “Add stuff” which is on the right side of the screen.  You can select the items you want to display.

The Google account also allows you to use features like the Calendar, email alerts, Google Docs, Google Notebook, etc.   If you scroll down this blog to the previous posts here and here, I have links to all of those features.

If you think all this is too much, try Exalead, which is a new search site.  You can edit which websites show up on your search page and it takes about five seconds!

I wanted you to know that you should create a personalized account through Google so you can access all of these tools and manipulate your own settings. With Google Alerts, you can setup a directory of news items you wish to subscribe to. As these article subjects appear in the global news network, you will be emailed concerning the newest items. So now your topics of interest are emailed to you as soon as they are reported. Great tool for kids doing current events research.

Can you think of any other ways to use this?