As usual, I start looking for one thing, and an hour later after starting out on a movie review for the latest incarnation (or “incarceration”?) of the latest Resident Evil movie and ending up on a blog about flannel… I forget about what I was looking for in the first place. However, I want to talk about the blog on flannel. Well, actually not the blog itself. Whether it is a realblog or not, I have no idea. It is actually being used as an example of google’s new plaything: google pages.

I see amazing uses for this in the classroom.

First of all, google is free to everyone. Siging up for a google account used to be a little bit of a hassle (remember when you had to have a friend send you an invitation to get a gmail account?) Below I have a link to sign up.
Students who need a rich, visual way to showcase their work can now (without any knowledge of html or any other computer language) create attractive, professional webpages very simply. With the (and this HAS to be my favorite acronym in the world) WYSIWYG editor - for those of you who have NO idea what I just threw at you, it stands for “what-you-se-is-what-you-get” - making web pages is so simple that 30 year veteran Math teacher can do it. Wait… yeah, that’s right! That 30 year veteran Math teacher! Anyway, back to the kids. They can present, create, communicate… anything you want them to. Teachers can also use it as a free website for communicating assignments, announcements, ANY use that you can think of.

You pick out your own template, color scheme, and start editing. Now, as easy as it is, just think what our kids can do with it…. uh huh, that’s right. They will take this and RUN with it!

So don’t be afraid, give it a shot. You know you want to. If you don’t have a free gmail account, get one HERE, then take your kids there and have them sign up for their own if they don’t have one already. When they do, they can create some pretty awesome presentations using the power fo the world wide web.