This is the second installment of three posts announcing the winners of the D2L Community Home Page Widget Contests.
1st place – Office Hours Widget
Author: Greg Jorgensen, St. Cloud State University
Office hours widget from SCSU – Greg Jorgensen
Greg explains:
“Widget appears on course homepage(s) for those who wish to utilize Adobe Connect for online office hours. The widget can be placed in multiple course pages, as the linking mechanism appends the Student First Name, Last Name and Course Name to the URL (via D2L’s replace strings) so the students enter the Connect room as First Name Last Name – Course Name. This helps with student identification and proper course association.”
“The widget is ‘smart’ and automatically changes to reflect the instructor’s presence in the Connect room. The screenshot shows a ‘generic’ example and has no specific office hours posted. The individual can easily edit this as they need to.”
A note about the screenshot above: students would see one or the other, not both as shown in the graphic above.
That’s 150 Discovery Points for Greg. Nicely done!
ASL Dictionary widget by Dale Hargis
2nd place – ASL Dictionary
Author: Dale Hargis, Columbia College
Dale says: “We have recently undertaken the ambitious task of creating an online ASL (American Sign Language) course. For this, we created a series of about 300 videos as part of our ASL dictionary, each one showing how to sign one word or phrase. This widget is a rotating content widget, showing a different word each time the student logs into the home page. Thanks to RotatingContent.com for the help with javascript!”
It appears that the RotatingContent site is pretty popular with D2L widget makers. Two other sites often used are Widget Box and Google Gadgets.
Dale earns 125 Discovery Points for this stellar entry.
3rd place – Central Time Zone Widget
Author: Fresa Jacobs, Columbia College
Central Time Zone Widget by FresaJ at Columbia College
Fresa says: “Placed on both the My Home and Course Pages this widget helps students manage due dates. We wanted to be able to link directly to the D2L Course Calendar and not have advertisements for other websites. This is a simple time widget using Javascript can also take a student to the Course Calendar if they click on it. We have students all over the country so this is great as all assignment due dates are based on Central time.”
As someone who is constantly tripped up by time zone issues, this simple widget appears to be invaluable to students trying to meet deadlines. (BD)
Fresa receives 100 Discovery Points for this submission.
4th place – Course Meeting Information
Author: Brandy Brown, Pima Community College
Brandy says: “I made this little widget for my hybrid course and my students loved it. It was for a course I teach (though I am an ID) at the UA South, whose classes are all over the place. ”
That’s 75 Discovery Points for Brandy to spend in the D2L store.
Course Meeting Information by Brandy Brown
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