iGoogle - Making Google Your Own

As a teacher, you will appreciate the ““iGoogle”” site to organize all the web resources you would like to use with your students. The objective of this presentation is to provide you the resources you need to personalize Google to support and enhance teaching and learning.

Students will also benefit from the “iGoogle” site to communicate with you and their cohorts in the classroom or the world.

One major consideration before allowing your students to personalize their google page is what to block from student use. You should meet as a team of teachers, administrators and network administrators to determine what is necessary for education and what should be blocked for security reasons or bandwidth issues. Each item within the Google items may be blocked individually. You may also block from students but allow for teacher use. As an example, if there is an excellent video within YouTube or Google Videos for educational purposes, the teacher should have access to that video to share with the students as a whole. The teacher shows the video, but students may not have access to it or any others. I understand the need for security and safety for our students, but we need to keep a balance. Blocking everything serves no purpose nor does leaving everything wide open.

Lets Create our iGoogle Personalized site:

Go to www.google.com

iGoogle

Click iGoogle
The image below appears.
Begin your personalizing iGoogle by selecting your interests. Keep in mind that each interest you choose will be a new tab within your personalized google page. I wouldn't choose too many now. You can make your own tabs later.
Select a theme.
Click See Your Page.

Make iGoogle your homepage:

Click Make iGoogle your homepage
Select from the two options below.
I selected to use this webpage your only homepage. Then when you go to the internet you will always come to your iGoogle. I consider iGoogle my online desk with file drawers and folders.

Create Your Account

Click on My Account
Create an account
Remember your login and password
Sign in

Sign In to Your account I don’t sign out – My page is the official home page when I open Internet Explorer. Select a Theme:

Select from a variety of themes
Set your zip code or city if selecting a changing theme

Set up Tabs to organize your items:
(News, Curriculum specific items, Projects, etc.)

Click Add Tabs
Name your tabs
Either check or uncheck "I am feeling lucky."
Drag items from the main page to the tabs if they don't belong on your main page.
Drag items where you want them on each page.

Add more items to your page:
(Think about resources that would help you accomplish tasks in your classroom lessons.)

Begin on your Home tab and move from tab to tab to add items
Use the Add Stuff Link - on the right side of your personal page
If you want an item from the list in more than one tab, add that item as you are on that tab
Some Items I find very useful:
- Bookmarks
- Notebook
- Documents
- Spreadsheets
- Calendar
- Google Earth
- SketchUp
- Blogger