From the first section, I chose to explore Google News. I find it too busy for my taste, but I suspect that is in part because I am an inverterate newspaper reader. I love the feel of the paper in my hands, and I would much rather sit at my kitchen table with paper and breakfast than sit at my computer to read the news. While I can appreciate that many people would prefer to read only the news they are interested in, I find that I read more deeply and in greater variety when I read the print versions. Nonetheless, I thought it wonderful that I could pick a section in a different language, and that I could allow them to create a personal "recommended" set of readings for me. (Although, as one of my colleagues asserts, it begins to feel a bit stalker-ish.)
On the other hand, I love the archive search and timeline feature. I can think of many applications in how I could use such a thing with students doing research on an historical topic. I also found it fun to see how often and when my school showed up in the media.
From the second set of options, I chose to work with Google Pages. I am fairly impressed with this feature, and even explored with a colleague the idea that we might change from the service we currently use for our teachers to a service like this one, since this is free and the other is not. But after working with it for a while, we decided it would not be cost-effective, given that we would have to train teachers in on this site, which is less user-friendly than the one our school currently uses. Still, if we did not have that option, I could easily imagine spending some time to customize this further. I put up a fairly rudimentary version of a class page here: http://sites.google.com/site/ttsplibrary/Home
On a similar note--but not strictly under this thing--I followed some advice I got in response to my forum question on the 23 Things Ning and set up a PBWiki page to start consolidating information for teachers on the topic of technology in our school. (Thanks, Caitlin!) Here is a link to what I have gotten together so far. http://ttspmedia.pbwiki.com/FrontPage
I've also recently shifted to gmail for my home email account. I haven't really played with tags and folders yet, but I do like how the "conversations" keep info together. I just have to get used to it.
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