Using a Portaportal for Technology Integration

Chrystalle DoyleAshton Elementary

What is a Portaportal?

What a Portaportal Provides

• A free, server based, bookmarking utility• A convenient place to keep your online links• A place students can access • A place parents can access • A place other teachers can access• An easy way to intergrate technology into the

classroom• An easy way to share links with others

How Can a Portaportal Help Me

A Place to Keep Your Bookmarks

• Do you have more than one computer?• Are your bookmarks on your laptop different than

on your desktop.• Have you ever found a good site in the lab or

library and want to remember it for later?• Have you ever had a computer die with all your

favorite bookmarks?

A place to test your links

• You can find sites at home and add them• Then you can check on school network to see if

they work before you make them available to use.• The quick add button makes it easy to surf the

web and add sites to your portaportal.• It saves time• No more writing down sites and trying to

remember them

What a portaportal looks like to administrator

What a portaportal looks like to a guest. They can make no changes

It is easy to access and change

• Using the preferences button you can choose to allow guest access or keep your account private

• You can add or delete categories as you go and allow students and parents to see all of your links or just part of them.

How I use it to integrate technology

• I have 2 portaportals• One for the school Guest Name-

ashtonelementary• This site has all subjects and things that would be

helpful to the teachers, parents, and students at our school

• My second portaportal is for my classroom Guest Name-musicdoyle

• This one has links for what we are and have studied in my classroom.

Ashton Portaportal

Music Doyle Portaportal

How do I set up a Portaportal?Step 1

• Sign Up• Check email and confirm your account• Once your portal is set up, you should log in.

Then you can add, delete or edit your categories and bookmarks as often as you wish. The Login Name you choose here will also be the guest name of your portal. So don't choose anything of a personal nature if you plan on allowing guest access to your portal.

Step 2

• Add Categories• Begin by entering up to five categories of your

choice. Into these categories you'll place links and/or other categories. You can divide your portal by class or by subject (and create different portals for each class). For now just create some categories. You can always go back and edit them at any time. The button looks like this. It's on the top right corner of your portal:

Step 3

• Add links to each category• Now you can fill in your categories. You can add

links to get started, or add sub-categories to provide more detailed organization. To add sub-categories click on the button in the category title that looks like this: When you're ready to add links click on the 'plus' icon in the category title that looks like this: This will bring you to a page where you can enter links as well as associate them with names, descriptions, and icons.

Step 4

• Set Preferences• Finally you can go to your preferences page and

tailor the details of your portal to your taste. On the preferences page you can change the colors, layout, greetings and many other decorations. Its also where you go to turn sharing on or off. The button leading to the preferences page looks like this:

Step 5

• Share your Portaportal• Once you're ready to share your portal just tell

your students the login name. This is all the information they need to view your portal. Guest access can be found by entering your user name in the special 'guest access' forms, or by entering your user name in the regular login form.Alternatively the guest page can be accessed directly at the URL: http://guest.portaportal.com/YOUR_USER_NAME

How many people can access the page?

• There should be no limit to the number of people who can access a portal at any given time. Certainly not in a classroom setting. Hopefully your local network would see any problems before the Portaportal server would.

How do I get a guest password?

• There is no guest password. People can view your portal by entering your user name (without the password) at any login prompt.In order to use your guest page you need to go to your preferences page, there you will find a popup menu called "Guest Access", change it to read "Allow Guest Access".

Privacy Concerns??

• We will never give out your email address. • We take it only so that we have a way of reminding you of your

password if you lose it. If you are that sensitive about it just sign up for a free web based email client and give us that address. You don't even have to check it.

• Your bookmarks will never be linked to your email address. • We will never willingly give out the information involving who is

bookmarking what page. As far as we are concerned who or what you link to is your business.

• Bookmarked pages will never be published without the users express consent.

• You can feel free to keep personal pages inside your portal. We will not be publishing compiled lists of sites marked. That having been said you should be aware that the chance to be broken into, while slight, is there. So for bookmarks that are of an important and sensitive manner some caution should be used.

• This statement will be honored. • While seemingly superfluous we mean this one. Even in the future if our

privacy statement does change users signed up while this statement is in effect will be treated with these rules. We will not change the rules out from under our current members.