iGoogle Mashup suggestions for students!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Darcie Priester on November 25, 2008 at 5:47am

Not sure what a mashup is. I know the widgets I use on my igoogle page that I like are the sudoku, dictionary, places to see, and yellow pages.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Rob Jacklin on November 25, 2008 at 7:24am

Thanks for responding Darcie!
I think my question may have been too broad. There are SO many widgets and gadgets available through iGoogle, I was just hoping to put together a list of common ones that would really helpful for students. I have several students who have added the dictionary and sudoku as well. I think those are awesome gadgets to add! I'm just looking for recommendations on others that would be hyper student friendly.

Thanks for the suggestions!

On the topic of a mash up....iGoogle is a "mashup." A mashup is a webpage that allows you to take content from other sites and display them all on one page. So it is to say that I've taken content and "mashed it" onto one site. Netvibes is another example of a mashup. (hopefully that made sense...and if I didn't explain it correctly, hopefully someone will come along and straighten me out :-) You can always click here for more information.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dan on November 25, 2008 at 7:05am

Do you have your students create their own .gmail account for this? Or what email address do you use for them to create their own google account?

Thanks!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Rob Jacklin on November 25, 2008 at 7:16am

Thanks for replying Dan,
We use Gaggle.net for our student email. It is possible to create a Google Account without using Gmail. Once you have a Google Acct. you are only minutes away from accessing a Gmail, but we don't emphasize that at all. Roughly 50% of our students have Gmail accts anyway. I'm concerned a bit about students creating another email that their parents wouldn't know about, so I've tried to educate our parents as much as possible.

We use Goggle accounts primarily for using Google Docs, Reader, Alerts, Maps, and now iGoogle.

Hope that helps!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Anne on November 25, 2008 at 1:15pm

Have you looked into Ubiquity? http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Rob Jacklin on November 25, 2008 at 2:07pm

Nice....very cutting edge. Not quite there for student use yet, but soon....

Thanks for the heads up!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Anne on November 25, 2008 at 3:19pm

What are your concerns for student use?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Rob Jacklin on December 12, 2008 at 9:30am

Don't know that the tool has enough uses yet to start working with....yet. I have been wrong before though?

I do need to spend some more time with it.

Thanks for the encouragement.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Anne on November 25, 2008 at 3:16pm

How about zoom clouds? http://zoomclouds.egrupos.net/

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Brandon Garlock on December 7, 2008 at 3:03pm

We actually have an entire blog and gadget set up just for finding the newest coolest gadgets at: http://igooglegadgetblog.com/ or you can get the gadget directly here

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jason de Nys on December 7, 2008 at 5:04pm

Hi,
On a pedantic note, I probably wouldn't call iGoogle or Netvibes a mashup :) They are personalised start pages.

How old are your students and what are the educational outcomes that you are looking for? One of the best uses of personalised start pages is as a place to aggregate RSS feeds for interesting blogs and news sites.

I know that you are currently using iGoogle but Netvibes has a bit more flexibility. You get access to all of the Google gadgets plus many more widgets from other providers. You can embed HTML code, which means that you can grab embeds from SlideShare, Scribd, or any of these:
Embeddable Things to Put in Your Wiki Blog or Moodle

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Teaching Education Moodle Embed

Sharing individual widgets with friends is easy as is sharing whole tabs. It is a more social experience than iGoogle

• ▶ Reply