Eduwidgets is a new site from the VDOE for teachers and students. In fact it is still in Beta version and in my estimation a lot of work remains to be done on it. Furthermore, there are many aspects of it which I haven’t yet had time to explore. Nevertheless, I think I’ll go ahead and review it now, based on what I know, and perhaps write a second post after I've explored it further and they've improved it more.
The general objective of the site is to give teachers and students the ability to create online, interactive content tied to Virginia’s SOLs. These “widgets” then can be made available to other teachers throughout the state. Likewise, an Accomack teacher can search through and use content created by others.
This content can be displayed in one of three interactive formats: timelines, graphs, and images.
Here is an example of a timeline I created. Notice that you can click at the bottom to take a quiz on what you might have learned from the timeline. I found this timeline fairly easy to create. However, Eduwidgets does not work equally well in all browsers (you want to stay away from Internet Explorer). If you follow the link, you’ll go to a timeline which has not yet been “published”, so it doesn't show up in searches, etc. I have a similar one I submitted for publication perhaps a week ago--and haven’t heard anything back on it--so that seems like a potential problem as well.
You might want to view and perhaps use some of the content which they have available as “exemplars” to get an idea of how the graphs and “interactive images” work. I also created an Interactive Image, but, I’m not going to put the link to it in, because I think I sort of overloaded the system--wanted it to do more than it could really do smoothly. The basic idea here is to have the student drag and image or text to the correct location.
Another problem I found with the site is that the instructional videos are blocked by our filtering system. Given that they are hosted by Vimeo, I would think they will be blocked by the vast majority of districts throughout the state. I can’t understand why the VDOE didn't foresee this difficulty.
The vision seems to be for teachers to set up and manage student accounts and for students to do research and create content themselves. The creations can be interactive timelines, graphs, or interactive images--some of them remind me of some of the Gizmos with which the science and math teachers are familiar. You can sort through Widgets which are examples from the VDOE, or others which have been authored and shared by teachers and students from around the state. You can search through these by subject, by grade level, or/and by SOL.
You can sort through and use widgets created by others without an account. If you register for an account you can make your own--and have your students make their own. Registration can’t be left to the last minute, however, as you have to confirm your Email address and then wait to be approved.
To summarize, Eduwidgets is a site I’d use if I were still teaching history. I’d come up with an assignment where they’d have to do some research and present their findings in the form of a widget. However, I look forward to the day when all the bugs are worked out and the site is a bit more user friendly.
