Porta...What??

When I heard the term "Portaportal", honestly, my first reaction was "she made that up".  No kidding.  Then, through accessing the website and looking around, I began to realize that it was for real.  Not only was it for real, but I began to realize that it could be just what I was looking for to cure my cluttered Favorites Menu problem.  I might be the only person who does this, but every time I find a website I like, or sometimes even an item or page on a certain website (like a recipe or retail item), I mark it in my favorites so I don't lose it.  It was almost an addiction... seriously.  I'm no hoarder, but I could not bear to part with some of them.  I had recipes in my favorites that have been there for 3 years... you get the picture.  Clearly, I could not have my recipes on my Portaportal assignment for this class, so I have created two separate Portaportals: one for work and one for play.  :)

In completing the Portaportal assignment, obviously, I found several educational websites that will be very useful to me in my future teaching career.  I really liked how I could organize them by category, or however I wanted, really.  Super cool.  As a teacher, I imagine that I will have a Portaportal very similar to the one I created for this class that can be accessed throughout the year by myself, my students, and even other teachers.  I think that asking the students to create their own Portaportal would also be a fun activity.  They can create a school-based Portaportal with websites they can access to help create projects, to utilize with assignments, etc.  I would also encourage them to create a personal Portaportal, like I have, that will contain their favorite sites that they visit on their own time.

When I think back to how I used to keep track of my favorite websites, I am reminded of endless scattered sheets of scribbled www's.  Over time, I figured out the Favorites Menu was a good fool-proof way to keep track of them, but it quickly became overwhelming to sort through.  I am an "everything has a place" kind of gal, and websites listed randomly with no order was seriously beginning to give me the creeps.  With Portaportal, you can create one with several different domains, separate the domains into different Portaportals altogether (work, play, etc.), and let's not forget that you can access them from ANYWHERE because they are web-based.  Get your favorites cleaned up and organized!  It's a no-brainer, really.