EduGeek Journal

As I was reading my daily dose of Dilbert, I noticed something in the new widget that displays the comic strip: a button that lets you embed the comic on your site. Like this:

I’m guessing since this is the official site, then this is totally legal. Dilbert may not be the first to do this, but it is the first time I have notice anyone that lets you actual embed their content on your own site for free. This is an interesting break through.

There are basically two types of sites that are popular on the Web: content-based sites and services-based sites. Services-based sites are usually pretty good about giving you a widget of some kind that can be embedded on your site – see the Jaiku widget at the side of this blog. Content-based sites have been pretty slow to offer tools like this. Sure – they have RSS feeds or even links to “Digg” an article or whatever – but rarely ever some type of code that lets you put their content, or a widget with their content – on your own site.

I think this could be a great bonus for educators if we see this happening more often. Just think about it – if you see a good article in an online newspaper that would be great for your course – just embed the story in your course blog instead of a link. A really sophisticated widget might even have commenting functionality.

Anyway – just a side note that I found interesting today. I need to get back to my series about the three C’s of social networking for education now….