Learning with Widgets - Roman Emperor of the Week

Hi everybody! Happy Tuesday! I just published a new widget at my collection of javascript widgets and gadgets over at SchoolhouseWidgets.com. I have so much fun every time I publish one of these, and I would be very curious what members of this ning community think about widgets as a way to share content.
Basically, I am a content-generating machine (it's fun for me, and how I keep on learning)... so what is the best way to share that content? By rendering the content as dynamic javascript widgets, I keep hoping that will help other people make good use of the content, too. Is there anybody out there using javascript widgets for educational purposes in their websites and/or course management systems? People using iGoogle? (Much to my surprise, I discovered that even a techno-newbie like me can create Google Gadgets for iGoogle!)

This time, I chose 53 of the most important Roman emperors so that you can get an overview of Roman history by reading about an "emperor of the week," starting with Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, and continuing up through the emperor Justinian. (You can browse the contents of the script to see if your favorite emperor made the list or not - any "I, Claudius" fans out there?)

To me, these widgets are the best way I can think of to create useful Internet-based learning objects for my students, and for people in general. The widgets are built of little "chunks" of information, which suits people's learning styles these days - but each chunk contains links where you can go learn more, much more, about a given topic if it gets your attention.

Also, I try to include good images in the widgets. Images are a great way to get people's attention and to give them an emotional, non-verbal dimension to the information conveyed in the text.

The widgets come in two different dynamic forms, date-based or random. Date-based is nice, because you can feel like you are gradually mastering a topic week by week. Random is also nice, because random is inherently FUN. Randomness makes the computer seem alive... even if we know it's not.

Finally, widgets can be SHARED. This is the most important thing of all! I spent a few hours creating this widget yesterday, and now I can use it on any of my own websites where I think it will be useful... and so can YOU... but you only need to spend a couple minutes to add it to your site, instead of a few hours. Anyone can get the script and run it in their own website (including a course management system, such as Desire2Learn). If you can cut-and-paste HTML javascripts, you can include these widgets in your page.

Blogger.com has recently opened the floodgates to javascript so you can even include javascripts in Blogger posts, and with the new Blogger you can built your template with plug-in widgets, so I've included the Blogger-widget code for all my widgets, too.
Ning.com (like quite a few blogging services) does not allow actual javascript in the posting area, so I'll include here a screenshot of the random emperor script in action - click on the image to go to the Schoolhouse Widgets page where you can learn more!

I'd be very curious to know what people think about this. I've been using dynamic javascripts built with the wonderful web-based Rotating Content Tool for several years now and created this SchoolhouseWidgets.com website in the hope of sharing them more widely. The Rotating Content Tool website (rotatecontent.com) also has a shared library although it has not been much used. So.... what do you all think? I make these for my own enjoyment and use in my own online classes... but is this also a possible way to share content? I like to think it could be!