Igoogle Gadgets

A little info about me:
I don't have much programming experience.
I want to create an igoogle gadget. Nothing too elaborate.

I am a teacher and I would like to create an igoogle gadget my students and parents can download that I can update to deliver them current assignments/due dates, math tips relating to current topic of study, etc.

I am also a looking to be a principal and was hoping to develop one for my school that I can update sports scores, school activities, school board meetings etc.


So I am assuming I will need tabs for the different topics. Then I figured the easiest way to deliver this information would be through rss feeds from blogs?

I have been looking around for a good tutorial on how to do something like this, or an open source code that I could make a few tweaks to but have come up dry. Any help on how to do this or do I need to learn some programming first?