Week 5 - Thing 11

I have spent a couple of hours trying to get a widget onto my blog! I went to the Web 2.0 Award Winners and chose to explore Widgets. First, I tried SpringWidgets. I tried to create a customized RSS feed and have it appear on my blog. I tried numerous times but I was not successful in previewing my RSS feed in SpringWidget or getting it to appear on my blog. I then decided to try a different RSS feed site. I chose yourminis. I was able to customize an RSS feed through this site but when I copied it to my blog I was not able to view it. It showed the box but I was not able to see my RSS feed within the box. By this time, 2 hours + had passed and I then decided to see if I could find a way to have my RSS feed appear in my blog using the help within Blogger. As you can see, I do have an RSS feed there but it was not done as a widget. I wish that I would have had someone to talk to this afternoon to help me work through this.

I then moved on to read about Ning. In our school district all of the social networking sites that I am aware of, have been blocked. I was very interested to read about Ning and how it can be used safely by teachers because of the variety of control features. We are not using it at the elementary level, but I must find out if this is something that we are using at the middle school and high school level.

I then checked out my Travel IQ. I should have studied the map more carefully before beginning because it does not give you much time to look and think. I ended up with 144,016 points at Level 5 with a travel IQ of 88. I don't know if that is good or bad but I found the game very interesting and challenging. It did ask if you wanted to add this widget to your page, so I did. It now appears at the bottom of my blog. I couldn't get a widget on my page earlier but there is one there now. So, there was a bright point to the end of my day! :)