On today's web, there are tons of ways to share links online. Two of the most popular are delicious and diigo. While I enjoy the benefits that comes with both of these services, there is a slight learning curve involved as well as creating an account. In order to share links with the teachers and students at my school, I needed something simple that they could access in a blink without any training. That's where portaportal comes in. I created a portaportal at the beginning of the year and set it as the home page for all of the lab computers as well as several student computers throughout the school. I love the response that I have gotten from teachers and students. It is very simple for them and the students are able to easily use it from home. I am adding links on a daily basis thanks to the fabulous resources I get from my friends on Twitter.
After attending TETC this year, I was able to see the many other uses for portaportal. The best session of the conference for me was given by Jackie Elam and Kris Marshall from Rutherford County Schools. Jackie shared this fabulous portaportal with us. She even exported her bookmarks (under portal resources) so that you can have a huge head start in getting your own portal up and running. Portals are very simple to create and easy to clone and share. Another great idea that I got from Jackie was this portaportal in which the teacher has created a folder for each of her students with personalized links under each. I thought this was a fantastic idea for differentiation in the classroom.
The best news is that portaportal is free. I pay the small fee for having an ad free site because I use it with so many students, but it is not required.
Does anyone have any other great portaportals to share?
I love the idea of using portaportal to differentiate instruction. Great use of this tool! I use Simply box with my students, I love how you can visualize the sites (I am such a visual learner!).
ReplyDeleteHmmm...I had not seen this before. Now I have all kinds of ideas racing through my mind. It is much easier to provide something like this for students.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great tool, no HTML needed to make a start page!
ReplyDeleteWe have start pages for K-2 and 3-5, but I make them w/Dreamweaver, linking to all the hotlists I also make w/Dreamweaver. Far more work than Portaportal... will have to rethink this for the future.