Online Organizational Tools

There are many tools online that can help teachers and their students organize information. One of the tools that I looked at was Netvibes. This is a personal dashboard where you can keep different pages on topics that you are interested in. Netvibes pulls information on your topic(s) from the web. You can chose to add or delete widgets on the page. I had heard of Netvibes before, but had never actually tried it. While I could see some uses for it, it seemed to pull a lot of information that I wouldn't use (I understand that it scours the web for the information). It was almost too much information and it kind of overwhelmed the senses. The user can add their own RSS feeds. One of the benefits is that you can have multiple pages on different topics. When I first started looking at Netvibes, it reminded me of iGoogle. I have had my iGoogle page for over a year now. I find that it is a very good way for me to organize all of my RSS feeds. It also allows me a quick way to access a particular website that I may use a lot without having to type in the URL. I have my homepage set to my iGoogle page on the computers that I use at home an at work. If a colleague asked me which one they should use, I think I would tell them that between the two formats, I would choose iGoogle. First of all, it starts you off with more of a blank slate so that you can put the information on your page that is truly relevant for you. Both pages allow you to customize your page and have multiple pages. It would be less work to have the iGoogle page than the Netvibes page because you build from the bottom up instead of trying to figure out what you need and what you need to remove. Another reason to choose iGoogle over Netvibes is that iGoogle integrates with all the other Google products that a teacher may be (or need to be) using such as Picasa, gmail, Google Docs, etc.
Another tool that I looked at was the Bubbl.us graphic organizer tool. This tool was very cool, but probably not one that I would have my students use. It was FREE! That is always a plus, however, it was not as user friendly as Kidspiration (which is also a graphic organizer, but it can cost a district a bit of money). I felt that Bubbl.us was a tool that I could use with my class, as long as I was doing the typing. It allows you to customize the colors of the bubbles and to drag and drop the bubbles to connect them (this could be useful on an interactive whiteboard if I had the bubbles already created and then had the students move them to connect the ideas). You can print your graphic organizer or post it on your website. You can also set up "sharing" for your organizer so that multiple people can add to it from different computers. It was fairly easy for me to type and add in new bubbles, but I am not a third grader. I know that some of my more tech savvy third graders would be able to use this tool with some support from me. I also know that Kidspiration, while it can be pricey, is more child friendly for my students and while free is great, sometimes it is better to fork over the money to pay for a tool that would be more child friendly and less frustrating for my young students. If the technology is getting in the way of my students learning the concept, then I would not be using the technology. I could see Bubbl.us being a fantastic tool for high school students to use.
I know we were only supposed to look at 2 tools, but I did want to say something about Classmarker website. This looks like a wonderful tool to use in class. It is a free, online test creator where your students can take their tests online and then they are "graded" by the website. It is a tool that I would like to try out with my students. I have used the spreadsheet in Google Docs to administer a self-grading online quiz with my students before and this seemed very similar, but perhaps a bit more polished. My big question that would be answered by using it with my students is "What are the advantages of the paid version of Classmarker?". I read through the site and looked at the comparison of the features in the table, but I really couldn't see how paying money was going to get me many more features that I would need except for perhaps emailing me the results. It's something to think about.