WHAT WORKS IN EDUCATION The George Lucas Educational Foundation

Edutopia Widgets?

Elana Leoni Social Media Marketing Manager @Edutopia, Active Mentor Posted on 3/9/2010

Hi all,

I'm researching ways to get our content out to more people like you. One way that's being discussed is by creating widgets. You may know the term widget as a gadget, badge, or module.

Basically, we get a lot of feedback from users on our site that they'd like to use/embed our content within their own sites/blogs etc. Widgets would easily allow this.

Here's an example of an education-related site that offers widgets: http://www.education.com/tools/.

Here's what we'd like to know:

:: Do you know of any sites that currently offer widgets you like/use?
:: What types of widgets would you like to see? Customizable by grade level/topic/or aesthetics like color?

Thanks in advance for your feedback -- we're really excited where this new technology can take our content!

Elana

Comments (3)

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Betty Ray
Edutopia Senior Blog Editor and Community Manager
Posted on 3/9/2010 3:03pm

If you could publish Edutopia content on your own site...

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To add to Elana's question, we're curious to know whether you'd be interested in publishing Edutopia content on your site (for free) and if so, what types of content would be most interesting to you?
For example, you could publish all articles that apply to middle schools. Or any content that addresses project learning. Or all Edutopia videos.

These "widgets" that we're talking about are just a simple means to facilitate the ability to publish this content simply and without any development work on your end.

We'd love to hear your thoughts!

Bill Powell
Retired Supt; 33 years in public ed; lives in Colorado mountains w/ family
Posted on 3/9/2010 4:56pm

Help neeeded with creating a sample Widget

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3.9.10

Elana,

I went to the site listed in your comments (http://www.education.com/tools/), and I could not create a Widget. I wanted to see how a teacher could easily create a widget, and I was not successful --- even though I followed the input template twice.
Any ideas on what I need to do to create a sample Widget? I think the concept of linking teachers to helpful sites might be helpful, but simply embedding or hyperlinking a helpful site in a document could be just as effective. Help, please. wpowell955@aol.com

Elana Leoni
Social Media Marketing Manager @Edutopia, Active Mentor
Posted on 3/9/2010 5:11pm

Edutopia Widgets

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Thanks for your response Bill. I went into the "Create a customized articles widget" page and was able to easily generate this code:

#eaw-wrap a:hover {text-decoration:underline !important;}

Education.com articles

http://www.education.com/themes/sky/i/widgets/loader-dark-blue.gif) no-repeat 50% 50%'>

All Topics

Get your own widget

Users can then embed that code within their blog or website. What widget did you try to do?

Quote:

3.9.10

Elana,

I went to the site listed in your comments (http://www.education.com/tools/), and I could not create a Widget. I wanted to see how a teacher could easily create a widget, and I was not successful --- even though I followed the input template twice.

Any ideas on what I need to do to create a sample Widget? I think the concept of linking teachers to helpful sites might be helpful, but simply embedding or hyperlinking a helpful site in a document could be just as effective. Help, please. wpowell955@aol.com