Tech Team Edublog

What Widgets and Plugins did you Choose?

I liked the add-on of a few widgets on my EduBlog, but ultimately decided to remove a few as I felt they didn’t provide a presence that I liked.

These widgets included the Recent Posts, 3D Rotating Tag Cloud and Google Webfonts.

The plugins I chose included AddThis, Social Share, and Embed any Document.

What are their strengths?

The Recent Posts plugin allows visitors to easily navigate my new content, helping teachers get to where they need to get, quicker. The 3D Rotating Cloud gave my blog a more interactive and engaging experience. The key words displayed some of the courses I used EduBlogs for a lot, and gave insight on some of the topics that interests me, and from all of them, the Embed any Document plugin is the one I find that brings a lot to my EduBlog. It improves accessibility to my blog posts, and provides a more aesthetic design, a lot better than the confusing and unorganized links.

What are their weaknesses?

For the recent posts, it gave insight on what I’m currently studying / interested in at school, versus seeing irrelevant content from 2 years ago, the Calendar just seemed to be a use-less add-on to my blog as there really isn’t a need to search by date, nor can I see the benefit of having such widget in an educational setting. The 3D rotating cloud I chose to keep, not for any educational purposes, but rather to personalize my blog further. Google WebFonts seemed to be excessive for my blog style, and was removed for the reason that perhaps my coding isn’t quite there yet, but more so because I saw no benefit of such plugin for my blog.

Can these plugins / widgets be used in a classroom setting to enhance student learning? Would you use / recommend it?

Most of these widgets / plugins can be used very frequently. Some aid in giving the blog a more personalized feel, and others help ease navigation through the blog. I think the document embedding widget will be by far the most used on my blog, as it’s simple, it simplifies navigation, and provides the blog a better looking design than links all over the page. Many plugins have been removed or will be rarely used for now.