Widget Mania
The ever-inspirational Bionic Teaching points to the groovy new Dashcode Widget Maker at Apple. At first I was a little wary that only the Beta version is available for Tiger, and only until July - but what the heck. I’ve got between now and then to see if I can come up with some fun widgets for my Dashboard crazy students.
The timing is perfect. I promised them a Dashboard day if they did a good job on their Wiki project. Since they’re excelling, I’m going to have to come through. But I want any new widgets they use to relate to school. So now I’m off to see what I can come up with. Making one for the school feed is nice and simple. Not so sure about a look-up for the library catalog, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Actually, I’m just hoping someone with mad skills comes across this and does it for me. M@, are you listening?
Blast! I need to read more closely. I only heard about the software as I rode into school quite dorkily listening to a MacBreak podcast. I was so excited I went right in and downloaded the software. Like you, I’d like to do a lot more with it than I am currently able. I think widgets have some real potential for use with students. Our current image won’t let them install widgets and it’s driving them crazy.
I don’t think Leopard is in my school future anytime soon but we’ve got three more years in our Apple contract so I’ll get it eventually. I may have to justify the home purchase as I doubt I’ll be able to wait.
I’ll be interested to see what you do with the widgets. If you get the library lookup working let me know! My librarians would flip out if I could manage that for them.
Tom
25 Jan 2007 at 10:38 pm