Why I love Netvibes

Before I set up my Netvibe website, I would typically spend one to two hours per night searching for information on the Internet. Most frequently I would search for newly published articles related to the current science content I was covering in class. I would also spend some of the time searching for answers to questions that students would ask during class. I was exhausted with amount of reading I was doing and eventually I cringed when students would ask questions I didn’t know.

Luckily, I was introduced to an aggregator called Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/). According to Solomon and Schrum (2007), instead of an Internet user going out and checking websites for new information, the aggregator informs the user when new information is published. In other words, all I need to do is “tell” my Netvibes page to check certain websites and when those websites have new material available they show up on my Netvibes page! The way to set up this transaction of material is through the use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds.

Today, I am able to check my Netvibe page and literally look at the newest science publications. From the titles and a few sentences of to the publication, I then determine if I’ll go to the source website and read the entire article. Literally the science news comes to me verses me going out and searching for it! I now spend about thirty minutes per day searching for material and I find myself learning more in those thirty minutes because Netvibes shows me precisely the information I need. Gone are the days of searching through thousands of google hits!

Other aggregators to check out: My Yahoo! (http://my.yahoo.com/), Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader/view/#overview-page), and Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) (Solomon & Schrum, 2007).


Solomon, G. & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0: New tools, new schools. Washington DC: International Society for Technology Education.