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Widgets

Page history last edited by pat potter 14 years, 2 months ago

Widgets in the Classroom!

 


 


 

Intro/Background

  • What is a Widget?

 

Mini-programs that bring important, live information right to your desktop.

For a full overview you can see the Yahoo! Widget website http://widgets.yahoo.com/info/

 

How do I start to explore the world of widgets?

 

Begin by downloading the widget program here: http://widgets.yahoo.com/download (it's free!)

 

There are thousands of widgets available and more are being developed and created all the time. The Yahoo! widget website even offers information on how to create widgets yourself.

 

System requirements:

 

  • Windows XP with Service Pack 1 installed or Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 installed, or newer -or- Mac OS X 10.3 or newer.

 

  • A connection to the Internet to download the program. Some widgets require an internet connection to run, but many do not.

 

  • 512 megabytes of RAM is recommended.

 

 


Footnote: Widgets for Mac OS 10 exist by the thousands also, and the download link in this wiki for the Weather Widget also leads you to the Mac OS 10 version. (I'm the Mac Girl if you have questions.) Here's the URL for the Mac download: http://widgets.yahoo.com/mac/

Cheers --

Elizabeth

 


 

Sources about Widgets

(Feel free to add to this list)

 

 


 

Let's begin with Yahoo!'s Weather Widget

 

 

The program comes with some widgets to get you started. One of these is Yahoo!'s Weather forecaster. Useof this particular tool need an internet connection.

This tool is useful in many ways in the classroom.

 

Some ideas for using the Yahoo! Weather widget with students:

 

    • learning about different places in the world

 

    • talking about weather - weather words (sunny, cloudy, rain, snow, partly cloudy, etc.)

 

    • What's the weather like today in _______ ? What's the weather going to be like in ______ on Thursday? etc . .

 

    • What should I wear on Sunday if I'm in ________ ?

 

    • For English students learning about the weather is useful - lot's of vocabulary is associated with weather as well as grammar - present, past and future. Also learning numbers.

 

    • Science classes can have lots of fun with this. Look at weather predictions for different places in the world and plot them on a map - then look at the weather forecast and find out if the forecast came true.

 

This should get us started. Post your thoughts and ideas about widgets in general and see if you can expand on some ideas about using the Yahoo! Weather widget with your students.

 

 

Please add your ideas for using the Yahoo! Weather Widget

  • What sort of mood are you in today? Where would you like to be? What should the weather be like? With the weather widget find a place somewhere in the world to go to. Gather 5 really interesting facts about your place to tell us when you get back. Dennis
  • Practise comparatives and superlatives (Tomorrow will be hotter/colder/wetter/sunnier/cloudier.. The day after tomorrow will be the hottest, etc. day of the week) Students may keep track of a whole week's weather conditions and build temperature charts. Claudia
  • Here's a warm-up I tried a couple of days ago with my CAE students: think of 3 words or phrases to describe today's weather (it was a horrible stormy morning), then think of 3 words or phrases to describe the ideal weather for an English lesson, then compare with your partners to find similarities. They checked doubts about vocabulary by asking me :-(... Should we have access to computers, this widget would have proved a wonderful resource! Gladys
  • Write a message to a friend. Using the weather widget, describe what the weather is like today to a friend who lives in another part of the world. Mary
  • Use the weather widget as a visual aid for a short weather news report to a partner. Mary
  • add an idea

 


 

Hopefully we'll look at one widget a week. It will be lots of fun to see how many different ideas we can come up with to use this fun and easy tool in the classroom. Looking forward to seeing lots of input from the members of the group.

 

Teri

 


I´d like to see an example of a wigdet in a website or in another place to feel how it really works.It is still too abstract to me! Isabel

 

I'm not sure how to do that Isabel - widgets are used on your desktop. Be patient and play with it a bit, you'll soon catch on. - Teri

 

Hi Isabel--

You can see some "widgets" at the bottom of my home page:

Computers for Education

They include a Frappr "button."

Mostly what widgets do is add a little link to a Website somewhere else. Your Yahoo widget won't run if you aren't connect to the Web. (Unlike a screen saver, which is all contained inside your computer.)

This leads me to another question/problem--what information is the widget sending back to the provider? We should read the widget privacy policy page very, very carefully. I decided not to use them on my computer after reading the policy. As I understand it, Yahoo may collect info from you about where you go and what sites you hit, what you purchase, and where.

cheers--

--Elizabeth

 

Hi Elizabeth--

Thanks for the information , but I couldn´t open your page.There must be something missing in the link.

Cheers--

--Isabel

 


Hi ISABEL-- just corrected the problem with the address--should work now!--Elizabeth


 

 

Actually many widgets require you to be connected to the internet to run - the Yahoo! Weather widget is an example, but there are many widgets that work without being connected to the internet. Hopefully we will explore one of these next.

--Teri


 

Widgets for numbers and math

 

I've found three widgets that are useful for students learning numbers and math. You don't need to be connected to the internet to use them. I decided to post the three of them so we can explore the advantages and disadvantages of each as well as post our ideas on how they can be incorporated into the classroom.

 

Teri

 

Math Table

 

 

Math Table can be downloaded here: http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/view.php?widget=32668

 

John Pavley - Math facts study aid for students of all ages. Displays a table of addition and multiplication facts from 0 to 31.

 

Speaks selected facts when user clicks on a row or column head.

 


Ideas for using Math Table

 

Post your ideas here.

 


 

Math Kards

 

 

Math Kards can be downloaded here: http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/view.php?widget=30895

 

John Pavley - Math Kards is a study aid for K6 students. It presents math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) from 0 to 12 as cards in a deck. Math Kards uses the Macintosh Speech System to read the math fact on each card to the user. Cards can be presented in random, ascending, or descending order.

 

Math Kards is a nice Widget to leaving lying around your daughter's or son's desktop.

 


Ideas for using Math Kards

Post your ideas here

 


Math Flash

 

 

Math Flash can be downloaded here: http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/view.php?widget=34375

 

 

Geoffrey Lowney - Math flash cards.

+ Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division and Modulo.

+ Select the operator, or select a set of operators (e.g. addition & subtraction).

+ Each operator has a different card color.

+ You have complete control over the ranges of numbers to be used on the cards (e.g. "1-10", "10,20,30", etc).

+ Cards can be sorted ascending or decending by answer, or randomly.

+ Cards can be displayed horizontally or vertically (or random for each card).

+ Specify how many decimal places to display for division.

+ Decide whether to allow negative answers for subtraction.

+ Math Flash can speak the expression and the answer.

 


Ideas for using Math Flash

Post your ideas here

 


 

Any additional ideas or suggestions

 

Once kids have been introduced to the concept behind math operations, all these widgets can provide a lot of useful and fun practice leading to a desirable mechanization of the process.

On the other hand, these tools can be useful to teach reading numbers to little children.

If I had had one of them at hand when my kids were small, I would have saved a lot of paper and pencil... and they would have had much more fun!

Claudia


This is a clock widget set to GMT/UTC--there are hundreds of different styles and models at ClockLink (just wave your mouse over the clock and click to link). I think one of these on every desktop would help students learn to tell time/keep time.

--Elizabeth

PS: I also installed one in my blog template at Virtual=Real.

 

 

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Comments (6)

Anonymous said

at 4:53 pm on Apr 12, 2006

I downloaded the weather wiki and have Palo Alto on it, and can't seem to change it to a Swiss city - please help!

Anonymous said

at 7:00 am on Apr 13, 2006

To change the location:

- Right click on the wiki itself and choose change location...

- then type in the city or location you want - you can add more then one and then switch between cities by right clicking on the widget and choosingthe city you want.

Anonymous said

at 1:02 am on Apr 14, 2006

You can also choose to use metric units from the widget preferences. In my case this allowed me to see Centigrades instead of Farenheit.

Anonymous said

at 6:14 pm on Apr 14, 2006

Thanks, I got it. It turns out I had to write it in English. Now I know what the weather is like outside;-)

Anonymous said

at 6:21 pm on Apr 14, 2006

Thanks everyone! Now I know what the weather will be like in my city in the next six days, and I can tell my husband about the moons, so that he can plan his fishing outings! ;-)!

Anonymous said

at 3:21 am on Apr 15, 2006

I can now look at the Frappr map and use the weather widget to see what the weather is like where you are ;)

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