Netvibes @ Preston Girls’ Secondary College

On discovering Netvibes as a result of a previous Bright Ideas post, Preston Girls’ Secondary College teacher librarians Judith Way and Reina Phung couldn’t wait to use it as a resource for students and staff.

Judith says, ‘We had been looking for a Web 2.0 tool where I could incorporate all of the other things we had developed. We needed a central location for all of our blogs, wikis and our Flickr and Delicious accounts. Although Delicious allows us to link sites and describe them, Netvibes gives us the option to incorporate each blog, wiki and other site into our Netvibes homepage. (We also had a problem with our ISP blocking Delicious. This has been an ongoing problem for some months and our IT technician has been liaising with our ISP, but at this moment, to no avail.)’

She explains, ‘Once the blogs, wikis, etc. have been linked to the Netvibes page, the actual sites appear within the page. You can set the size of each “mini page”. Students and staff can then enter their chosen site directly, without a need to click a link or open a new page.’

Judith continues, ‘Netvibes also enables us to dedicate pages for staff and pages for students. We intend to use the widget function to add a calendar so students can see when the Readers Cup is scheduled, when Book Club is due in and when Book Week occurs. Our Netvibes page is linked from our intranet and we plan to promote it by encouraging students to explore it during library orienation sessions, by making and distributing bookmarks with the URL and by introducing Netvibes at a staff meeting.’

Judith also says she found Netvibes relatively quick and easy to use and has even been complemented by the school’s IT technician on her work!

Netvibes can also be used as an RSS reader, so those people using Bloglines, Google Reader or other RSS services may decide to use Netvibes instead. Your RSS feeds can be set as ‘private’ allowing only you to access them.

We look forward to hearing how the staff and students at Preston Girls’ use the site and their thoughts on it.

Feature blog – Mill Park Secondary College

Heather Bailie, College Library Coordinator at Mill Park Secondary College has set up a most interesting blog.  Did I speak to you about… is a site just for library staff.  

Did I speak to you about...

Did I speak to you about...

Heather explains, ‘We have nine people making up 7.4 EFT on two campuses.  I spend half my time at each campus, others have one or two days a week at their non-home campus.  Due to part-timers it is impossible to have a meeting that all library staff can attend.  I set up this site during the Web 2.0 course when the penny dropped that blogs are a sensational communication tool.  Now instead of conversations between 2 or 3 people, phone calls and emails going back and forth and people being left out of the loop we can keep the conversation in a central location and it is up to each of us to contribute.  Better than that, with our Google readers set up as a widget in our iGoogle pages we are instantly alerted of new news.  I have even used a post to call for agenda items for an actual meeting and then made comments to record the minutes.’

She continues, ‘This site has been set up directly as a result of the library staff at Mill Park Secondary College completing the SLAV Web 2.0 course. I have just been appointed to the Leading Teacher Position of College ICT Coach – I don’t know if I would have even considered applying before doing the SLAV Web 2.0 online course.  What I do know is that having completed it and what I have gained from it has contributed enormously to my successful application!’

It really does go to show that the possibilities of Web 2.0 are only within the realms of our imagination. Congratulations to Heather on her innovative use of a blog and on her appointment as a Leading Teacher, College ICT Coach.