Andy Guess over at Inside Higher Ed has written an intriguing article about the future of widgets and their potential applications in the field of education.  His finding is that widgets are "real enough within the digital ether that some educators want to turn them into teaching tools." 

It's interesting to think about his contention that widgets may turn out to be ideal "for creating interactive, individualized instructional materials that can live on a course Web site, a personal blog or even a mobile phone" -- in other words, highly portable teaching or instruction platforms.  Sounds logical to me.  He adds another important point that might presage (or, really, lay the ground work for) widgets having a bright future in education space: "as the latest versions of course management packages adopt module-based interfaces and as colleges’ Web portals cull together widget-like boxes for the latest news and e-mail, the objects are becoming more familiar to students — even if they don’t realize it yet." 

So if many students are already using widget-like applications for school, it seems that "true" widgets that can be ported to multiple places and platforms would be the natural next step up from the widget-like interface of a lot of new course management tools that he mentions.  I'd say the future looks bright for widgets (in the education arena).

Good food for thought...

You should read the entire post here; it's a good read.