My First Widget

I have designed a widget for converting temperature from Celsius degrees to Fahrenheit and vice versa. In this widget a text box is provided for the user to enter the values. Up on entering the values the user can then choose between two options of C to F or F to C.
I have approached as follows:

•  First I have created the config.xml. In that I have provided name for the widget ( tempconverter) along with the icon, description.
•  Secondly I have created a javascript file named script.js. In this I have defined 2 functions. Both of them gets the input from the html file and converts the values respectively from C to F and F to C. And the result is displayed in html format with bold text by using getElementById().innerHTML.
• Then I have created html page named index.html. In this page I have created the form.The form has the following elements. 
• A paragraph to give little description about the widget and how a user can use it.
• A text field through which the user can enter the value.
• Two buttons, one with the value C to F (which converts form Celsius to Fahrenheit) and the other from F to C (converts from Fahrenheit to Celcius).
• A div element which is used to display the result of the above buttons.
• And I have included my external java script file in the header. And I have called the java script functions in their respective onClick attributes of the buttons.

How the widget works?

When the user runs the widget, the widget will give an opputunity to enter the number. And if the user wants to convert to Fahrenheit then the user can clicks on C to F. Then the “toF()” function is called and result is displayed in the div element of the html page. And if the user clicks on F to C button then “toC()” function is called. The result is displayed in bold text for visible clarity.

Collaborative Software in Educational Field

In educational institutions, collaborative software can help teachers in various ways. Using these softwares the following can be achieved.

• Allowes classes to interact with each other.
•   Teachers can create assignments easily and these assignments can be easily shared with students, have discussions on those assignments and students can submit those assignments. Eg: www.cyn.in
• Teachers can make documents, course and reference materials available to the students in one place, and these can be made available at all times.
•   If a new notification is needed to be informed, then teachers can create a new notification and school events and make them available.
• Studying can be fun. This concept can make the students want to learn more, don’t get stressed. 
•  One can share knowledge with the world, which inturns helps more people. For eg: www.wikipedia.com

There are some negative points to this kind of educations:

•  Some times it might become hard to maintain and update the information about latest happenings.
• If the discussion board is public, then anyone can change and even delete some important information.
• Some times users may post unimportant and in-appropriate things on the public page.
• Having more fun can lead to more problems, students may don’t want to study anymore.
• For teachers it can become hard to prepare materials upto current scenario, as the face of education and means of education are changing rapidly, they need to update their content almost daily.

Digital Story Telling

Digital story telling has now became of the best ways to communicate ones ides. The story may include simple tales for kids to social awareness stories like courage shown by lot of people. As per the old saying goes.. A picture can speak a thousand words, these digital story creating softwares can bring life to the stories. 


According to wikipedia. One can think of digital storytelling as the modern extension of the ancient art of storytelling, now interwoven with digitized still and moving images and sound. Thanks to new media and digital technologies, individuals can approach storytelling from unique perspectives.


Digital story telling in Education


In education digital story telling can do magic. Because using digital story telling tools that are freely available in the world wide web, teachers can prepare generally a 4-7 min presentations, on the required topics, which will make the students to understand those topics very efficiently. Using these latest web 2.0 tools the main topic of the study can be made directly to the point without any problems. The students can understand the point directly without much need of going through lot of study materials, and reading. This will help students in to understand the study materials directly which leads to more time for work related research.


Even the primary school teachers can also take benefits of this Digital story telling. They can create short moral stories with the help of tools such as Kerpoof studios etc. and show those interesting stories to children. Please click on the link below the image for one such example..

Princess Tansa

One other example of digital story telling is to give information regarding the latest websites that offers free education online. Different colleges and universities are using these websites to give free education to the students that are present all over the world. Here you can see one example of such way of giving information for the user..

Media Used And Idea behind:

For story for children , Princess Tansa, I have used Kerpoof Studio, this is the tool that is very simple to use and can also be used by children, in this one can create images, movies, story books etc.  The idea behind using this is to create a simple story and show how one can teach morals for the children.

The other media I have used is Windows Live Movie Maker, the idea behind creating this story is to provide information about one website that helps students all over the world, for free. I have participated and learned so much from that website, so I wanted to share that information with the students over the world.  To make it simple without annoying animations etc etc., I have created a simple paint images to make a movies.