How to Build Personal Learn-ing Network- “Pageflake”

- "Mashups" of RSS feeds and widgets

1. What is Personal Learning Net-work? • Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) are all

about using web tools such as blogs, wikis, twitter, facebook to create connects with oth-ers which extend our learning, increase our re-flection while enabling us to learn together as part of a global community. PLNs increase our opportunities to ask questions and receive help compared to our normal daily face-to face interactions.

• Learners can choose what tools they use, who they connect with, how they want to learn, and when they want to learn through

2. What is “Mashups”? "Mashups" typically combine RSS feeds and

small applications, commonly called "widgets," on a single Web page. Both Pageflakes and netvibes are excellent free tools, as is Google's iGoogle. You can use these tools to collect and display updated In-ternet content and they are especially usefully for current-events projects. Mashups combine content or functionality from existing web ser-vices, websites and RSS feeds to serve a new purpose.

3. What is Pageflakes? Pageflakes is an Ajax-based startpage or personal

web portal similar to Netvibes, My Yahoo!, iGoogle, Wikpage and Microsoft Live.

The site is organized into tabs, each tab contain-ing user-selected modules called Flakes. Each Flake varies in content; information such as RSS/Atom feeds, Calendar, Notes, Web search, weather forecast, del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr photos, social networking tools like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, email and user-created modules. Pageflakes has 250,000 Flakes and over 130,000 Pagecasts (publicly shared pages created by users with individual URLs).

4. Advantage of Pageflakes in the classroom Aggregate multiple sources of information Introduce students to resources they need Resources persist after class has ended Encourage life-long learning Student-created pages Reflect on which resources are most valuable

for their own learning Benefits of using a variety of technologies

4. Advantage of Pageflakes in the classroom Complements learning styles Present information in a variety of ways Promotes social constructivism Use teaching tools that are similar to what to-

day’s learners are using in their everyday lives Delivers content in a variety of formats all in

one place using widgets

5. Pageflakes: Language Online Classroom Language teachers or learners can build their

own pageflakes such as course announce-ments, a mini-blog (discussion in other lan-guages ), discussion forum (practical issues, in English), YouTube video (showing a language video), news in English or other language (RSS feed from an English newspaper), shared bookmarks, and a to-do assignment list.

6. How to build up Pageflakes Step 1. Go to the site Pageflakes. http://www.pageflakes.com/

Step 2. Click Sign up and create your ac-count.

 

Step 3 : Click Community on the top.

Step 4: Select your own favorite flakes, pagecasts or people.

Step 5. Select Flakes section and search your interests.

Step 6: Select Community section and search your interests.

Step 7. If you want to delete a flake or pagecast, go to the main page and delete it.

Step 8: Arrange your own flakes and pagecasts according to the topics.