Widget: Joseph and His Brothers

For several years now, I've been part of a Greek reading group in Norman, Oklahoma. Now that I'm about to move to North Carolina, our physical get-togethers will sadly come to a stop but we are using the delightful PBWiki to carry on our group in virtual space. (If you have not used PBWiki, it is definitely worth looking at - such a flexible tool for easy online collaboration!).

The reading we are about to embark on over the summer is the Septuagint version of the story of Joseph and His Brothers. In order to illustrate our wiki, I prepared another widget - this time it is a collection of Images of Joseph and His Brothers. Each item contains an image with a brief description and a link to a larger view of the image along with additional information.

In medieval art, the typological connections between Joseph and Jesus were strongly emphasized, while in Renaissance and more modern art, there is an emphasis on the moments of high drama, such as Joseph and Potiphar's wife, or the scene of Joseph reunited with his brothers.

I hope to post some information here at this blog which I learn from our adventures reading through the Septuagint this summer.

Meanwhile, here is the script in action (if you're reading this via email or RSS you'll need to visit the blog to see the images displayed by the script):

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Widgets: Bible Stories

I've created another widget - this time it is a collection of Bible stories which can be displayed either as a "Bible Story of the Week" or a "Random Bible Story."

Each item contains a brief summary of the story along with a link to the Wikipedia article where you can learn more about the story. There is also an image, with a link to a larger view of the image and additional information.

I'm hoping this would be useful in helping people become familiar with the stories of the Bible. It sure was hard choosing just one story for each week! I tried to focus on stories that would be included as components of Bible "narrative literacy." (For more about religious literacy, see my notes about Prothero's book.)

You can find this widget and related widgets at the SchoolhouseWidgets.com website. I hope that for anyone with a course website devoted to Bible-based courses could find the information and links useful in covering the basic Bible stories.

You can see the widget in action in the right-hand column of this blog! And here is the random version of the script:

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Widget: Annunciation Scenes

Over the past couple of days, I have created a new widget that shows a range of Annunciation scenes. I spent more time on this than I anticipated because I was not aware of the wealth of resources I would find online. In particular, I was able to find a few really excellent examples of Orthodox icons where Mary is not shown reading (a typical choice in Western art), but instead is shown spinning a scarlet thread with a drop spindle - a thread, the legend tells us, that would be used to spin the veil of the temple. Fascinating!

I worked with materials from the Web Gallery of Art and other image aources, so each item in the widget contains an image and a link to the image source (which provides a larger view of the image), along with a brief comment about some distinctive feature of that particular image.

As with the Cross and Crucifixion Scenes widget, this Annunciation Scenes widget is available in both a week-by-week and a random form. You can see the "Annunciation Scene of the Week" widget displayed here in the blog in the right-hand column.

The more I work on developing these week-by-week widgets, the more I think this could be a really useful strategy for sharing basic "religious literacy" information with teachers and students. I know I am learning a lot of good, basic information about religious tradition by assembling these materials, which is usually a good indicator the materials can be useful to others as well!

I'll be writing blog posts here week by week to explore more in depth each of the images featured for the week, hopefully with some help from friends who are interested in this topic as well! So... stay tuned for more - and please feel free to take and use this widget in your own website or blog!

Widget: Bible Books

I've created another widget - this time it is a collection of information about the books of the Bible, which can be displayed either as a "Bible Book of the Week" or a "Bible Book at Random."

Each item contains links to the text of the book online in original languages and in English translation, along with a link to the Wikipedia article about the book, plus a brief passage selected from the book which appears in italics.

I'm hoping this would be something useful to help people become familiar with the books of the Bible - including wonderful books like Tobit and Wisdom which are not included in the Hebrew and Protestant Bibles, but which are part of the Catholic and Orthodox canons.

You can find this widget and related widgest at the SchoolhouseWidgets.com website. I hope that for anyone with a course website devoted to Bible-based courses could find the information and links useful in exposing their students to basic information about all the books of the Bible.

You can see the widget in action in the right-hand column of this blog! And here is the random version of the script:

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Widgets and Desire2Learn

As I mentioned in my post about What are widgets anyway?, I include widgets in the homepages for my courses in Desire2Learn. In this post, I'll provide some specific notes for Desire2Learn users who want to include widgets in their course space.

Why use Desire2Learn widgets? It's a fantastic way to add dynamic content to an otherwise static webpage. Students are accustomed to webpages stuffed full of widgets (Facebook, MySpace, et al.), so adding widgets to your Desire2Learn page can really make your students feel at home... while sharing educational content with them at the same time!

Instructions for Creating a Homepage and Adding Widgets

You can get a great start by looking at this video tutorial about Desire2Learn homepages and widgets created by the University of Oklahoma Library systems. The tutorials shows and tells you how to create a custom Desire2Learn homepage and how to add widgets to the homepage.

Even if you are not at OU, you can follow the instructions in this tutorial to create a homepage for your course. You need to create the homepage first, and then you can add widgets to that homepage.

Instructions for Creating Widgets

Here's a step by step presentation of how to take a SchoolhouseWidget.com widget and deploy it in Desire2Learn. (Make sure you have created a homepage before you begin this process; the OU Library video tutorial shows you how to create a homepage.)

1. Create New Widget. Log on to your Desire2Learn course and click on Edit Course, then click on Homepages. Then click the Create New Widget button.

2. Name Your Widget. You will first be asked to give your widget a name. You can also supply a description, which is a good thing to do if your school will allow you to share your custom widgets with other instructors. When you are done, click the Save button.



3. Custom Code. You can accept the default styles for the widget, and go straight to the Custom Code tab. This is where you will enter the javascript code that you will copy and paste from SchoolhouseWidgets.com.



4. Copy Widget Script. Go to SchoolhouseWidgets.com and select the widget you want to create. You will then need to highlight the entire contents of the script box for the widget you want to use. Clicking inside the box and then using the Control-A key is a good way to highlight the contents. Then copy the contents (Control-C is an easy way to copy).



5. Paste Widget Script. Return to the Desire2Learn custom code box and paste the javascript code into the box (Control-V is an easy way to paste). Click the Save button when you are done.



6. Add Widget to Homepage. Click on Manage Homepages, and then click on the link to the Homepage you have created for this course. Select the panel area in which you want to display the widget. Next, click on the new widget you created in the Available Widgets column, and use the right-arrow to move the widget over into the Active Widgets column. You can use the up and down arrows to arrange the contents in the column. You can use the Preview button to see how it looks. When you are done, click the Save button.



7. View New Homepage. Click the Go To Course link in order to return to your course homepage. You should see the new widget displayed on the homepage!

What are "widgets" anyway?

Widgets and Gadgets

Webpage widgets are a way to designate a space on your webpage and to display someone else's content in that space. All kinds of content can be displayed via widgets, such as weather, news, stock market tickers, jokes, cartoons, games, puzzles, etc.

There are also desktop widgets that display someone else's content on your desktop. In the new Windows Vista operating system they are called gadgets, and the term gadgets is also used for the content you can add to your Google Custom Homepage.

The Google Custom Homepage is definitely the easiest way to see the incredible range of content that can be distributed in widget form. If you'd like to create your own Google Custom Homepage (it just takes a few minutes), you can follow the instructions for creating a Google Homepage I provide here for the students in my online courses.

Educational widgets

For several years now, I have been developing and distributing educational content that people can add to their webpages, and I have recently consolidated and reorganized those materials at a new website: SchoolhouseWidgets.com. I'm going through all the different widgets I've created in the past at my various websites and collecting them here at this site, standardizing the formatting, image sizes, etc.

To create this content, which is dynamic content that changes based on the date or at random, I'm using a genius tool created by Randy Hoyt which you can also use to create your own dynamic content. You can find all the instructions and information here: Rotating Content Tool.

In the past I had focused on "blank-of-the-day" content, but I've now concluded that "blank-of-the-week" content is more effective for my needs as a teacher. All my online courses are built on a weekly schedule, rather than a daily schedule. By creating a "blank-of-the-week" widget, I end up with 50+ items, which is definitely enough for the random version of the widget to also be effective. So, in addition to standardizing the formatting of my old scripts, I am coming up with "blank-of-the-week" versions of some of my old "blank-of-the-day" scripts.

Widgets versus webpages

To me, the genius of widgets is that the content is intended to be shared. So, if I build a widget based on my own area of expertise, ANYBODY can use that widget on ANY webpage ANYWHERE in the world. So, for example, all the professors using Desire2Learn - including professors who do not know how to build a webpage, even if they wanted to - can insert widget content into their course management webpage, thus making it available to their students. Here's a screenshot of my Desire2Learn space with widget content displayed in both the left and right panels, and anyone using Desire2Learn anywhere as their course management system can do the same:



Why widgets instead of webpages? Here's the difference: a webpage that I build is like my sandbox full of toys in my own backyard. I can invite you to come play in my backyard, that is, I can invite you to come look at my webpage. But let's face it, most people hang out in their own backyards - they don't spend all their time paying visits to other people.

Well, with a widget, it's like throwing all my toys over the fence to you so that you can play with my toys in your own backyard! Share and enjoy! I have an infinite supply of my toys, so I'm glad to throw them over the fence to you.

So, I'll be announcing new religious literacy widgets here at this blog, but if you are interested in widgets in general, make sure to visit the SchoolhouseWidgets.com website and subscribe to the announcements there.

Questions...?

I've been working with widgets and distributed content for such a long time now that I tend to forget that most people haven't messed with widgets at all. If I have not given you the information you need here in this post, please leave a comment with your questions and I'll do my best to answer them!

Widget: Bible Women

I've created another widget - this time it is a collection of images and texts about Bible Women. There is a Bible Woman of the Week, and you can also choose to view instead a Random Bible Woman.

Each item contains a brief description of the woman, a brief Biblical passage, along with an image and a link to find out more about the woman's story, and also about the image. As with all the widgets I've done so far that contain images, the images are at most 200 pixels wide and 300 pixels high, which makes them easy to place in a Blogger sidebar, the side panel of a course management system such as Desire2Learn, etc.

Widget: Greek Gods and Goddesses

I have a new content widget which I have prepared: Greek Gods and Goddesses.

This is something I have done primarily for my Myth-Folklore course at the University of Oklahoma, and I was not sure whether to include it here at the ReligiousReading.com blog.

Greek mythology is rarely taught with a focus on "religion" in this country (which is an interesting and hardly innocent choice), and it cannot qualify in any sense as a world religion today.

Yet I decided to include a post about it here for one important reason: in order to understand the early history of Christianity, it is essential to have at least some knowledge of ancient Mediterranean religion - including the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greek world.

So, in the spirit of teaching people the basics of ancient Greek religion by an examination of the gods and goddesses of that religion, here is my Greek Gods and Goddesses widget, which is available for you to use in two forms: Greek God of the Week, or a Random Greek God. There are 53 items in the script, covering all the major gods and goddesses of the ancient Greek tradition. You can add the widget to your blog or your website - it's easy!

Widget: Cross and Crucifixion Images

This weekend I created a new widget that shows a range of Crucifixion scenes. This was a really fascinating project for me, as I actually learned a lot about Crucifixion iconography in the process of building the widget.

I worked with materials from the Web Gallery of Art, so each item in the widget contains an image, a link to Web Gallery of Art (to see a larger version of the image plus additional information), along with a comment about some distinctive feature of that particular image.

As with the Hindu gods and goddesses, this Cross and Crucifixion widget is available in both a week-by-week and a random form. You can see the "Cross of the Week" widget displayed here in the blog in the right-hand column.

I really enjoyed this project because it is a good example to me both of "religious literacy" but also "visual literacy," helping people learn how to identify specific, distinctive features in this important Christian iconographical tradition. I'll be writing blog posts here week by week to explore more in depth each of the images featured for the week. So... stay tuned for more - and please feel free to take and use this widget in your own website or blog!

Widget: Hindu Gods and Goddesses

Using the genius Rotating Content Tool built by Randy Hoyt, I created two scripts today that allow me to display a Hindu God of the Week (53 gods and goddesses spread out over the year) or a Random Hindu God, complete with brief description, an image, and a link to the relevant Wikipedia article.

You can see them in action in the sidebar of this blog.

The great thing about these javascripts is you can put them anywhere! If you'd like to put the script on your webpage or your blog template or in your course management system, please feel free to do that - share and enjoy! Although it's very primitive right now, here's the website I put up very quickly today where I will be compiling these widget scripts: SchoolhouseWidgets.com.

Below you can see what the scripts look like as widgets in my Desire2Learn Indian Epics course. If there are any Blackboard users out there, let me know if it has a feature like the "widgets" in Desire2Learn that let you add dynamic javascripts to liven up the course website page. These widgets are so easy to make in Desire2Learn; you just cut-and-paste the javascript into the HTML box and you're good to go!