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App of the Week: Take an x-ray look into any website’s code

mozilla-xray
Ed. note: App of the Week picks are now being curated with help from the editors of Graphite.org [1], a free service from Common Sense Education. Click here [2]to read the full app review.

Mozilla X-Ray Googles [2]

What’s It Like? Mozilla’s X-Ray Goggles allows students to inspect and tweak the code found in any site on the Web, including any of the individual elements that make up a Web page. Once activated, Goggles highlights these elements as kids roll over them with a mouse. As they click one of the highlighted elements, Goggles offers a pop-up window displaying the code, alongside a preview of that element. Kids can edit the code right in the window and immediately see a preview of what their changes look like.

Price: Free/subscription

Grades: 5-12

Pros: Discovery learning at its best: Revealing chunks of complex code on any website and letting kids edit and remix leads to powerful learning.

Cons: Some kids might need a little extra help understanding HTML structure, tags, and attributes, and the in-tool app doesn’t provide that.

Bottom line: It’s a blast to use and an easy way to get experimentation and prototyping going with plenty of student choice — kids are really in the driver’s seat!