What I'm progressing on: Flipboard

In an earlier post, I said I was working on Flipboard.  And I am.  And there's progress.

The Flipboard dashboard is an excellent way to organize information on the web that you want to access very quickly.  Flipboard is a free app (well, all students of economics know that it will actually cost you about 10 seconds of time to download it!  It's definitely worth it.)

On my Flipboard dashboard, you'll find my trusted newsite, the New York Times, my Twitter feed, and most importantly, my students' blogs.

Flipboard allows you to create magazines of different websites and then access them all within a few clicks.  Currently, I have 7 magazines.  I like to read SI's Peter King (especially MMQB), the Chicago Suntimes' Hoops Report -- those two are in my sports section.  I like to read economics blogs, particularly, Paul Krugman and Greg Mankiw.  And I like to read professional educators blogs supporting some of my colleagues.

What are my other 4?  My students' blogs!  In the second week of school, I had my students create their own blog on Blogger.  Then, I had the students send me a link to their blog.  I collected them and put together a classroom magazine.

The students then subscribe to the magazine on their own Flipboard.  Now, they have everyone's blog at the finger tips, and they can personalize their Flipboard dashboard as they wish.  I wanted to make sure they can access everyone else's blog because they will be commenting on other students' blogs.  This makes it so much easier to navigate through the maze of blogs.

Last night, I ran into one my student's parents whom I've known for 15 years.  We were talking about his son, and he brought up the iPad.  I told him to ask to see his son's Flipboard. 

I'm interested to find out how quickly my students have personalized their Flipboards.  They need to play around on their own to connect the Flipboard editor to their iPad or PC.  Once you do it, it's very simple to operate.  I mean, I have time to show them how to organize materials for our class, but how much time do I have to help them organize everything else?  Now that I think about it, the homework assignment should have been to personalize their Flipboard and set a minimum standard, but I had already assigned a reading on Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand.  I guess this where the Invisible Hand punches me in the face.

The key is show students how to be successful, show examples (for instance, my Flipboard), reinforce the idea, and let them flourish.