Pedagogy First!

Diigo and Delicious

Aargh! I was just bookmarking in Symbaloo and now I want to switch to Diigo! I like the highlighting option and the possibility of creating notes. Diigo and Delicious look alike in the bookmarking part but Diigo can offer a little more features, like highlighting and posting notes that make it more appealing. I may change it in the future, but now I am fine with Symbaloo. I like the organized chaos I created and I find things very easily there. I also like the layout used for the readers.

During the last semesters I have been using a quickbookmark page to gather all the websites that could be interesting for my students, but I see how Diigo and Delicious allow for much greater interaction and are designed for group activities. The feature I think is the most valuable in an online class is the ‘sharing’ option. I really like the opportunity to create a RSS with my bookmarks. That way I can filter the material I want students to work on without taking away the sensation of surfing the web. And I think this is very valuable because it empowers students to put themselves at the center of the learning process. We know that when students have strong control over their education, they learn in a deeper way. Pretty cool!

Del.ici.us. Bookmarking

I am really impressed with what Delicious.com can do. I not only was able to bookmark my favorite and most visited websites, but also I was able to find a couple of colleagues, who have been using this social bookmark website, by clicking under the people button.  

I’d like to use Del.ico.us.com to create student projects. I found a lesson plan where an instructor has his students create their own personal dictionaries by using dictionary.com and tagging the new words into delicious.com. I will continue brainstorming on how to have my students use this tool to create a project. For now, I have over 10 bookmarks and they can be found at the following link: http://www.delicious.com/lopezmercedes_jose

Diigolet

A few weeks back, Laura Paciorek introduced me to Diigo, and I have never turned back to the way I used to bookmark: Emailing myself the links since my iGoogle is always open, and I tend to check my email often. My email is like a grocery list for me.

Instead, I created a Diigo account and was bookmarking happily until I talked to Laura again, and she introduced me to diigolet.  According to their site, "Diigolet is not as feature-rich as the Diigo toolbar, but it can be set-up by simple drag-and-drop - no download or installation needed, and it works for all major browsers. Much more powerful than bookmarklets offered by other social bookmarking sites, Diigolet is a 'super bookmarklet' that allows you to highlight and add sticky-notes, in addition to simple bookmarking."  I really dig the simple drag-and-drop feature. And I really like the ability to create TAGS.  Makes searching for bookmarks a lot easier, especially at the rate I bookmark.  Here's a video tour of diigolet and some of its really neat features:

       

There's a link on the Diigo home page that reads, "Educator?  Get started here."  It helps educators integrate Diigo into a learning enviroment.  At this point, most of my bookmarks are for personal use, so I am not ready to move toward that yet.  Eventually, as I continue to explore other areas of this tool, I'll look into that feature. 

Social Over-Bookmarking (Week 8/ Cohort 2)

I started with using Delicious, and I really liked it and didn't understand people who used Diigo instead.

Then I started using Diigo, and I really like it and don't understand people who continue to use Delicious. But that's OK, because I can set up Diigo to automatically post everything, tags included, to Delicious anyway! :-)  When Furl died (I used that for bookmarking the sites I link from my online lectures), Diigo was able to migrate them over.

But now my problem is organizing! My public library has over 1700 entries! When did I have time to do that? I have no idea. And my tags are a mess. Of course, they're just an electronic version of my paper files, because the web amplifies everything we do. So, just as with my paper files (Eric, my office partner, can attest to this) I began with one system, then switched to another, then another, without going back and changing the system I had before.

But it's easier with social bookmarking tags, because at least it tells you what you used to call that thing before (media? video? visuals?). Well, sort of. I have 214 tags. That's ridiculous. They have something now called "Lists". Maybe I should reorganize?

Luckily, these systems have search, and they save everything in reverse chronology.

A cool thing I like about Diigo is annotation, with groups or just by myself. Once you have a Diigo account, log in and open the toolbar or bookmarklet.  Then go here to see if you can view my annotations and add your own: http://blog.make-a-masterpiece.info/fair-use/ .

I also use these bookmarks for my online History of England class, by tagging them "hist105resources", getting the link to the RSS feed off the Diigo page, and adding it to a block in Moodle. I have not yet had students create their own resources using bookmarking, but that's my plan as soon as I get to teach an honors section online! :-)

Week 8: Social Bookmarking

For me social bookmarking has been one of the most important tools I have been introduced to by my POT colleagues--particularly Lisa Lane. Teachers are using social bookmarking for everything from providing the core structure of a course to offering a supplemental resource to students. As you create your own social bookmarking account and learn about this tool, please share with us your reactions and ideas for how you might use this in your teaching.

Cohort 3

• Learn about tagging and discover Delicious (a social bookmaking site)
• Create your own account at Delicious or Diigo and collect at least 10 sites related to teaching or your discipline
• Blog your thoughts.

 

Cohort 2

Please share what you are up to in your current classes in terms of applying your explorations of online tools from last semester. This week any reflections on how you have used social bookmarking in your teaching would be particularly helpful.

Diigo Diig it

Ah - running behind. What is that? The hurrider I go, the behinder I get? My husband has been out of town, so I have been him and me for a little bit. One of the wonders of having your own business. The work is due, someone has to do it - oh that means me. Anyway, here I am on Sunday night, behind. But I have found some fabulous (for me) sites about webdesign and just design in general. Thanks for the reminder!

I have a link to my list:

http://www.diigo.com/user/claudiaf

Does that show up for you? I don't know. I hope so. 

I certainly love how the web brings exciting new tips right to us. We just have to take the time to take a peek. Inspirational! I will be showing at least a few of them to my students. Examples of simple website design. It doesn't have to be complicated. Clean, efficient. User friendly. A page about how fast your website loads. How Google wants you to optimize your websites.

Some great pages about typography. Hand drawn typography. How to make art from the pieces of letters. Just plain fun. 

Some of these pages are blogs. I don't always agree with what is said, but enjoy reading the opinion and then thinking about it. Stirs up the mental juices.

What a world we live in. We are so lucky. And I am so very glad I have signed up for this group. You inspire me with your comments and thoughts and discoveries. I am grateful you write about the trials you have while wandering through all this technology. Everyone seems to click with different pieces of it. And be confused by other pieces. Most of us are on the prowl when we are tired. Success is harder to come by, but we can find comfort and be more persistent when we follow other class members foot steps. I feel relieved to know that you all struggle too. And rejoice when you succeed. If you can do it. there surely is hope for me.

So here I am, with my Diigo, my list of awesome links, only one week behind now and all the more wise from your gentle proddings. Thanks Jim. The reminder email works wonders.

deeee-licious is delightful

i've never bookmarked before; i can't believe how much i like and and how easy it makes my (web)life!  i tend to have, oh, say...40-50 windows open at any given time (with different programs, but STILL: this is ridiculous, i know).  i did this because i frequently stumble upon sites of interest and i leave them open so that i might return to to it later.  sometimes (well, occasionally) i actually DID make it back,....sometimes i would copy and paste the websites onto an email to myself so that i would remember to go back to it.  sometimes my computer would just crash and i would lose it all.  aye, dios mio.  and ALL that time, i could have simply been doing this.  i didn't even make it to diigo or any of the (many) other social bookmarking sites, because i was so happy with delicious.  it is simple, the tagging organizes your websites for you...i love this.  i did also find, in my web meanderings, a site called www.topikality.com which sends me articles and information about any topic i'm interested in.  it hads to my already-gargantuan pile of things to read, but i don't care; this sort of thing makes me as excited as a kid in a candy shop.

i also rediscovered an anthropologist i learned about a year or so ago, Mike Wesch, who produces interesting media in collaboration with students about the culture of the web, and the nature of information, learning, the web and students today.  here are a couple of his short videos (both fairly brief, and worth a watch):

about information on the web:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g 

about students today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&feature=channel

San Diigo

Still playing catch up for actually taking a break over break, with POT and elsewhere...

I am already familiar with Delicious, I have had an account with them since 2005 when i stared blogging, but haven't really used the program since I stopped that blog and lessened my presence in the blogosphere. Anyway, I wanted to learn something new this Saturday afternoon, so I decided to check out Diigo. This program provides me with a solution to something I have wanted to be able to do but never got around to figuring out how to do, have traveling bookmarks. Since i work on computers at multiple schools as well as my own, Diigo provides me with a means to quickly access the same information on every computer! Very cool. Usually what I do now is if I know I will need a bookmark from my computer later I email it myself and access them that way. But That doesn't help me when I unexpectedly need one of my bookmarks. Now, problem solved!

I added some of my regularly used bookmarks, like my class pages, along with some of the bookmarks I regularly read and which I have mentioned here to begin with, thinking that I would then add them to the group, as mentioned in week ten. However, I can't seem to find out how to add my links to the group link page. I see how I can add to the group link when I first bookmark a site, but there doesn't seem to be a way to transfer them over. Considering they are public bookmarks, and anyone can see them if they click on me, this might not be that big of a deal. But nevertheless...

In class I can see how this tool could be useful for collaborative research projects. I have taught classes where students needed to share and comment on each others research,bu materials had to be printed up and brought in. This could make it so much easier for everybody involved, and could be done as homework instead of taking up class time. Often with historical research collected online, student's use sites that are of dubious provenance, or, when looking for primary docs, they get ones that aren't. Bookmarking research on Diigo for all to see would enable students to police themselves, to collectively analyze whether a source is good or not.

Since I already learned some features of Google Docs at the seminar and blogged about it previously, I decided to stick with learning new things and try out a wiki. However, I'm not on Moodle or Balckboard, and there are very many wiki sites on the net to choose from Does anyone have any suggestions as to which wiki program to use?

Flash design: social bookmarking as a whole class

To go way out with the social bookmarking idea, I could build a whole class around it. I'm calling this "flash design", not because of Adobe's product, but because I'm designing on the fly, as I type here.

Diigo or Delicious would be the class website, or the main link from it. I hate all my textbooks, so there wouldn't be one.

Let's say it's modern American History, since 1865. 

Pedagogy: I want to teach the class chronologically. Each week has a period of time. First week is introductory, then Reconstruction, the The West, etc. Just like my syllabus. Each week has a tag: I could do Week1, Week2, or I could use Reconstruction, The West, etc.

Let's try Diigo. I make a group called History 111 Fall 2010. All students are added to the group. I could make the group invitation only, private.

I could make a list of topics for the week, or not. I could make rules (sites must be .edu, or must be tagged "fun" if they aren't, for example). I could frame guidelines ("Find a website that covers something about this era that is not covered in any of the other bookmarks. Annotate with a brief description, a critique following these guidelines, and your name.") I could demand discussion ("Comment on at least two bookmarks each week, commenting specifically on its usefulness in understanding a page you bookmarked yourself.") If they miss a crucial topic completely, I'd throw in a bookmark of my own.

Students would find and post web pages. I (or they) could construct exams based on what was posted for each week. We could use a wiki to construct exams.

If I want to extend beyond bookmarking, we'd need a course tag. I'd create a tag with the class name: LaneHist111. That's if I want it to be perpetual. If I just want it for one semester, I might add a designation of the semester. Then we could also post to Twitter or elsewhere, and put all the posts together on an RSS page, including the bookmarks.

What do you think?

Lisa

Creating Community: The list approach

(1)   Create a Ning and play with it. I set up a Ning page. I wanted it to be functional and look pretty but I'm not very good at using social network sites.I need to take a class or seminar to learn how to use the software. For now, I decided to place Ning on my "to do" list and move on with other activities.

(2)   Create your own blog site.  I created my blog on Edublog nearly a year ago so it’s time that I start revisiting and posting the things on a regular schedule. I took the time to set up a very nice page and used posted regularity for about 6 months. It’s a shame I stopped posting but other things got in the way and as one thing lead to other I just stopped visited the site. Now I am going to starting posting there again.

(3)   Check out Facebook or Twitter. Okay I am now officially a twitter fan- I wonder if the correct terminology for that would be a Twan! I even decided to follow Tom Hanks – who knew! I surely didn’t.  Today, I went to learn about what’s happening in our world and was pleased to find a new post from tedtalks. For the next 8 minutes I was quite entertained and I recommend the below video to anyone interested in what kids have to say. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did -

  Talk about Creating Community  
   Adora Svitak: What adults can learn from kids
  

 

 (4)   Play with Elluminate within Blackboard:  Wow, I set up Elluminate live in my Bb classroom and have decided to use it for the rest of this semester. Over the past week I was able to practice with a friend so I am confident that I will be able to handle the software and by the end of the semester become a proficient user. 

have a wonderful day, Barb.