The first time I used Squidoo I was impressed. I quickly started voting and ranking Brian Gray’s lists on Using Web 2.0 Principles to Become Librarian 2.0 (which is currently ranked site #576 out of over 100,000 Squidoo sites!).

Yesterday I decided to explore Squidoo a bit more by starting my own page, Information Tools on the Net, which I put together in about 90 minutes. And, those 90 minutes flew by! I could easily spend several hours creating websites using Squidoo.

Now you might be asking yourself, “Why would I use Squidoo if I can put together a simple HTML site on my own?” The reason is simple: because you’ll get a good looking, interactive, and fun page quickly. This is especially useful for instructors who want a class website, but may not have the time to put one together from scratch. Your students can interact with one another, add new websites to lists, and even vote to questions you pose.

The first step is creating a “lens” (which is the fancy Squidoo way of saying “topic”). Then, Squidoo gives you a template and some modules for your page. You can keep the modules, delete the modules, and add other modules. You’ll see on my page I’ve included an introduction module, list module, guestbook module, de.licio.us module, voting module, and an rss feed module.

If you know of some good Squidoo sites, please put them in the comments…(or if you create one, I’d love to hear about it!)