Last Wednesday, I worked with a number of google gadgets to plug into blogs. One frustrating thing about them is their sizing. They come in defined sizes, and they sometimes don't fit on the design of the blog they're being inserted into. I am not sure how to tweak the settings to make them fit, but I will be looking into that. I also experimented later with partial success as copying and pasting the javascript code into other html files. This opens up a whole new domain for adding all kinds of glitzy bells and whistles to Moodle pages and others.
One complaint about the gadgets is the number of broken gadgets. With their vast billions, Google could hire somebody to delete the ones that don't work any more.
I will say here that this has been a useful survey of technology for the classroom. I realize that we have just touched the surface of many of these topics.
Overall, I think the internet is a great resource, and I think there is great potential for it in the classroom. The problem is finding the right stuff and weeding out the garbage, especially video. The blogger gadget assignment and the delicious presentation reminded me of this. Compard to years ago, Google's search engines have helped get internet users to just what they want, but I along with others are looking for the tool to take it to the next level. There's just too much junk to wade through. Teachers can't possible look at all this stuff. Maybe some of the things we looked at like delicious and stumbleon will lead to a solution. The next computer genius is someone who can develop a way to generate search tags for video content.
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