Following an email exchange initiated by Chris Fuller today about making posts from our blogs appear on Talkabout Primary MFL, Jo Rhys Jones (creator of this NING network) sent Chris and I off to http://www.widgetbox.com/widgit/rssscroller to acquire a widgit that could be put on our personal pages of the network. Thus, anyone popping by to say ‘hello’ will see what we have blogged recently. Worked a treat as you can see here

This got me thinking as one of the attractions of blogging to me (shallow as I am!) is what Leanne Simmonds calls ‘the bling’ – that is, the bits and bobs that make your blog look attractive. As you may have noticed, I have a few bits and bobs in the right hand column. Looking at it, there’s a mixture of things for the reader (like my Box of Goodies and my del.icio.us tabs) and things for me (such as the visitor counter) and the odd thing that serves no purpose but to amuse (like Bart’s blackboard hidden at the bottom.)

Having added my widgit to my page, I decided to have a nose around Widgitbox to see what I could find. I discovered that Jo has made a Talkabout Primary MFL widgit which I have now installed on the right, as has Natalia Garcia at Nodehill Middle School – Joe is not the only clever MFL teacher there obviously! ;o) – for the Spanish Club she runs. In fact, if you go to the Spanish Club blog, there are a wide variety of widgits belonging to the other Nodehill blogs in the left hand column. So, not to outdone, I’ve made one for Vámonos
– in fact, it’s a Blidgit (a blog widgit) and you can subscribe to it, or add it to your blog through the My Blidgit button on the right.

Whilst I was there, I also added Las portadas de hoy which shows the front page of today’s Spanish newspapers and also a site translator – although I’m not a great fan of online translators, Google Translation seems to be quite good – but it’s on trial! I toyed with adding Sticky Spanish as the idea looked good ,bu the preview showed no content so I didn’t!

More exploring seems advisable to keep my ‘bling’ quota sufficiently high, but there’s a small child complaining of hunger so must go.

UPDATE – in fact, I’ve removed the site translator and replaced it with a (far superior?) link to Google Translation!