If you’re like me, you’ve got tons of places online that you frequent. Most people have multiple accounts all over the place. From Facebook to Twitter, LinkedIN, Pinterest, Google+, etc. you are busy and connected online. In addition to social networks you might have a blog, a learning Hub, and possibly email addresses you’d like to share with others. For these purposes, I believe that  it is important to have “one page” on the Internet that you use to share, archive, and connect all of these spaces.

After you create this “one page” you can then put that link in your email signature, in the “about me” portion of Facebook, Twitter, your blog, business cards, etc. It’s the mark of a smart, savvy online netizen. It’s also another step as you continue to create and curate your online brand.

There are several decent…and free…ways to build this one page.

About.Me

About.me is a free online space that pretty much started up this trend. About provides a quick way to build up a page for you that connects everything. You can view my About.me page here.

Flavors.Me

Flavors.me was my favorite “one page” on the Internet for a long time. Most of these pages and tools are all the same. The subtle (but important) difference is in the design aesthetics. To me, Flavors.me displayed the design and style that I wanted to showcase. You can view my Flavors.me page here.

Mozilla Thimble

This one might seem a bit out of the ordinary…because it is. Thimble is a free tool from Mozilla that allows you easily create and share your own web pages.  A super-powerful, super-smart tool that you (and your students) can use to get started with editing HTML and CSS online. I got the idea to use Thimble to create my “one page” on the Internet from Doug Belshaw. In a recent blog post, he indicated that he was closing his LinkedIn account, and shared his new About.Me page that he built using Mozilla Thimble. You view (and remix) Doug’s page by clicking here. You can view (and remix) my page by clicking here.

To remix the page, click on the green “Remix” button in the top right corner. If you don’t already have one, you’ll need to create a free account with Webmaker Tools (I recommend doing so). Once you have an account and click on that green “Remix” button you’ll be able to hack, remix, or recreate my “one page.” In essence, what you’re doing is taking my work, and rebuilding, or “re-voicing” it to make it your own.

To figure out how to make Thimble work…play. The right side of the screen will show the webpage. The left side of the screen will show the HTML and CSS codes. This is nothing to be afraid of. Click on text in the left panel and edit…it’ll refresh on the right. Click on a link and change it…it’ll change the hyperlink. Within no time…you’re editing HTML and CSS…and that’s a good thing. 🙂

To dig in deeper…and play with Thimble, check out the following materials and multimodal tutorial from Kim Wilkens.

 

Image CC by opensourceway