Posted in Family life
Ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you that in addition to literature, art and writing, that I love tech stuff! You hear people talk about men and their gadgets/toys - well at our house I am the one always reading about and sometimes pining for the next cool tech gadget! My most recent longing is to switch to a iMac from my increasingly frustrating PC.
Since writing a book on Using the Internet In Your Homeschool, I'm always on the look out for new sites to add to my updates. Have you heard of StumbleUpon.com ? My son and I have enjoyed checking out some of the neat sites linked from there, but today I joined and downloaded their free toolbar. Now I can click a button "Stumble!" and be taken to a random site. Actually it isn't quite random. You see, when I joined I chose categories of interests. Additionally StumbleUpon.com also learns my surfing behavior, so the sites that it chooses really are of interest to me.
I "stumbled" onto two neat sites today:
World Public Library - features thousands of free ebooks including children's classics, Shakespeare and more
Imperial History of the Middle East - this awesome site features a map and flash movie showing 5,000 years of history in 90 seconds. The history shown is the different countries and peoples that have taken over that region in order. A cool timeline at the bottom shows you exactly where you are in history as the map is highlighted and labeled.
Of course, not everything featured will be to your liking and I've just broke the surface of the capabilities of Stumble Upon. If you are interested in drawing traffic to your blog or website, you definitely need to learn how using Stumble Upon can help! However, you don't have to have any motive accept one of adventure to click the "Stumble!" button and see where it takes you
