Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Thing 8

I enjoyed playing around with Netvibes. I had a customized start page years ago but abandoned it. I have also tried played around with widgets previously, putting them directly on my desktop. In the end, I find the start page a bit too distracting. When I get on the computer, particularly to work, I don't want to see all sorts of interesting things pop up that will lead me away from my objective. I have explorer set up with 2-3 tabs on both my home and school computers to take me quickly to the sites I use most. That works for me.

I can see that this might be an organizational tool for students, helping them quickly locate and check in on things they have to follow for school. I can also see that it could distract them from their work, as it does for me, especially if they load up their start page with a number of widgets, plus facebook, twitter, etc.

As with all technology, the start page is a two edged sword.

1 comment:

  1. I have my Netvibes and Google Reader set as tabs. It is difficult not to not be distracted to those pages. I tell myself that I will only spend a few minutes...which sometimes ends up being hours.

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