iGoogle is a very interesting site! I have always used Yahoo or MSN for my homepage but iGoogle offers so many more options. And you can custom fit these options to your needs. I think that iGoogle could be a great thing to incorporate into the classroom setting. You could have these students customize their page to fit your classroom needs.
The first option I enjoyed was the translate opinion. There is a world of interesting and educational web pages from all around the world and with the translator option, you can read web sites in many different foreign languages.
The second feature I enjoyed was the Google Notebook option. I find that when I cruise the Internet doing research, I waste a lot of paper by printing whole pages for just a little information. The notebook feature would allow me or my students to surf the web and clip and paste info or photos into your notebook. This would help keep your students better organized while doing research and create virtually not paper waste.
A practical "stuff" item I like on iGoogle is the To Do section. Sometimes it is hard to keep assignments and project dates organized and this is a great tool to help you prioritize what you need to do and when it is due.
The fourth feature that I believe will help immensely in the classroom is the Docs & Spreadsheets feature. This would allow students to upload documents to iGoogle and they would be able to access and work on these documents from any computer. These will allow students to not have to worry about having their flash drives on them at all times to do just a little work.
Lastly, I really enjoy the news feature. Many children to do not keep up to date on what is going on in the world around them. You could have students put at least one news source on their iGoogle page and they would post a blog or do a paragraph assignment about one event they have followed for say a week or so.
iGoogle is a great idea and hopefully one day I can use it as a helpful tool in my classroom.
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