Thing 16 post

Give a review of the tool you explored - what worked, what didn't work, how might it be used in your personal or professional life?

I tried Google fast flip and loved it! It compiles newspaper and magazine articles and lets you flip through the start of each story. It is very easy to whip through the articles and then choose one or two to read in entirety. And I had a Web 2.0 breakthrough (!) when I found an article that I wanted to read later and perhaps share...instead of sending it to my e-mail, I used Delicious and tagged it.

I skimmed the headline articles and then did a few searches for my personal and school-related keywords. Some of the articles barely touced on the subject I was looking for, and others were too local to be of interest, but I did not have to read the entire article to find out. You can either read thumbnails or zoom in to more easily read the opening paragraphs. It was hard for me to stop reading.

I could see students using this for current events or science topics in the news. The reading levels may be a stretch for most middle school students, but there is so much variety of sources that this shouldn't be a real problem. Hmmm...you could even search for book reviews from different sources to compare and contrast. I bet there are many middle school applications for this great Google feature.