Participation in online projects can sometimes be quite a challenge to monitor. Students will be posting to various wiki pages, blogs or web sites at various times and frequencies. One way to combat this onslaught is to create an iGoogle homepage. You can create a tab for each project or class.  Then, you simply get an RSS feed from the wiki pages, blogs or web sites that you want to monitor. You should be able to tell at a glance what is happening. Of course, it takes a bit of discipline on my part to make sure that I check this on a regular basis. But, if I have assigned a blog project to all of my students, that could be almost 100 student blogs that I have to track and read. So, this is a life saver. You can read the blog posts right from the iGoogle homepage. If you want to leave a comment, then you have to go directly to their blog – but only one click away.

Sharing how to set up a homepage with students will give them a way to develop their own personal learning network, links to sites they love or to enhance their learning by organizing their important web sites.