Information Age Education

How-To Squidoo and Educational Lenses

February 26th, 2007

What is Squidoo? Squidoo is a website where people can create their own “lenses.” A lens is your perspective or favorite resources on a topic. For example, I created a lens on Fractions. It includes websites that have clear explanations of fractions, fun math games and practice, educational YouTube videos and books for further individual study. Squidoo lenses have great potential for teachers to aggregate helpful resources for students on a particular topic. I hope that this article inspires you to create your own and become a lensmaster.

You can build a site for free with the easy to use module-based templates. My first lens on integers took me about 3 hours to build. When I created it, I used my del.icio.us account to organize the different sites that I was interested in including. When I posted a site to my del.icio.us account, I tagged it with the lens topic. I’ve continued to add to it over the months and it’s now an excellent resource for both students and teachers. I’m delighted that it was included in the March National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) News Bulletin in the “Web Bytes” section.

There are a variety of modules that you can add to build your lens, including text/write, link list, amazon.com, poll, make a list, YouTube, Google maps and iTunes. The lens can be made more interactive by adding polls. I added a poll to my Ecological Footprint Education site about the size of people’s ecological footprint.

Most of the modules can be made more interactive with the “Plexo” feature. Plexo is a tool that allows your readers to rank or add to the data in your site. For example, on my Vedic math site readers can give feedback on which resources they found most valuable. The feedback automatically rearranges the sites from most to least popular. I’ve just started playing with Plexo modules this week. It feels like a nice way to help your readers sort through data and become an active learner. Plexo is also helpful because people can add other valuable resources to your site.

As the creator of the site, you can moderate how much interactivity you want. You can allow comments or not. You can also require that additions to your site be approved before they are published. So there is an element of quality control. As with most sites that allow rating, people must have a Squidoo account.

So what would you like to share with your students? What topic would you like to be a lensmaster on?

Educational Squidoo lenses to inspire you:
1. My Lensmaster Page, includes links to all of my Squidoo lenses
2. How-to Hoop Dance - my sister’s hooping lens; great for PE teachers (Yep! That’s me dancing in the videos.)
3. CTAP Middle School Math Project
4. 10 Tips for a Successful Parent-Teacher Conference
5. Thanksgiving Activities

Tips on how to create a Squidoo lens:
1. SquidLens: The Official Lens on Squidoo
2. How to add audio to your lens

These lists are just a start. I hope I can add one that you create. If you become a lensmaster, please post a link to your lens.

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Entry Filed under: Education, Technology, Information and Media Literacy, YouTube, Information Age