Add widgets for your blog and site

Did you know that the fastest and easiest way to add new features to your blog is by adding widgets into the sidebar?  Widgets are also a great way to personalize your blog and help it stand out from all of the others.
Here is a list of the most popular and most useful widgets used on class blogs, student blogs and personal educator blogs.

Authors

Author widgets are a handy way of displaying information about yourself or providing a link to posts by different authors on a shared blog or individual student blogs.

• About.me – Pulls your About.me profile information, and a small screenshot of it, into your sidebar.
• Author widget – Provides a handy link to authors’ posts on a group blog.  Reader just need to click on the authors name to view their posts.  See it in action listed as Student Authors on Mrs Harris’s Reader’s Response.
• Class blog widget – Displays a link to all student blogs attached to your class blog via My Class.  See it in action under Class blogs on Huzzah’s class blog.

Clocks and Calendars

Clocks are great for displaying the time in your location which helps when you are trying to develop connections with classes in other countries.  They also help younger students learn about time and time zones

• Clock Link – 100’s of different and unique clocks of all types.
• Local Times  – Wide range of different types of clocks including clocks that display times in different locations.
• Human Calendar – Adds a cute calendar composed of photos of people.
• My Calendar – Used to display a monthly calendar.

Helpful for Readers

Blogroll – Display a list of the blogs you like to read or share links to resources.

Google Maps – Embed a Google map – complete with directions, street views, and more.

Google Translate – Instantly translate your blog into many different languages.

Multimedia

Images and videos are great ways of sharing visually what is happening in your classroom and class.  They are also a good way of  delivering content and engaging visual learners

• Image Widget – Easy add an image with text to your sidebar.
• Instagram – displays your latest instagrams on your blog.
• Flickr Badges – Add a link to your Flickr account
• Flickr – Display your latest Flickr photos on your blog.

• Visitor Statistics

  Visitor tracking widgets display the visitors to a blog.  Not all blog visitors leave comments.  Visitor tracking widgets are an important for making students aware that they are interacting as part of a global community.  This is incredibly motivating for students and provides built in opportunities for geography and maths lessons.
  It’s common to see a range of visitor tracking widgets used on class and student blogs.
  
• ClustrMaps – One of the most popular widget on Edublogs.  Displays a small map with “dots” for each of your visitors.
• Flag Counter – Lists the most common countries that your visitors are from and shows the flag from each country.
• Feedjit – Displays visitors to your blog in real time and includes: which city and country your visitors are in; which website they arrived from, if any; which page they visited on your website; which external link they clicked to leave your site.
• Revolver Map – displays all visitor locations and recent hits live and in realtime on a revolving globe of the Earth.
• Who’s Among Us – With an account, includes some nice stat collection tools.

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Weather

Weather widgets help classes from other countries learn about weather and seasons in your area while helping teach younger students more about weather and how temperature is measured in different locations.

• AccuWeather – The most complete collection of weather widgets to show current conditions and forecasts.
• WeatherBug – Displays live, local weather conditions and forecasts.

How To Add Widgets

There are 100’s of different widgets that you can add to your blog sidebar and many of them are added using embed code in a text widget.
Adding these widget is as simple as follows:
1.  Grab the embed code for the widget you want to add.

2.  Go to Appearance > Widget.





3.  Drag a text widget into your sidebar.

4.  Paste the embed code into the text widget.

5.  Click Save and Close.
6.  You should now see the widget in your sidebar.