Bedford Edtech Network

Firstly, a bit of context. My students were A-Level ones, so reasonably mature (16/17) and the group was small (about 9) so I was on hand to support in a very intensive way that I suppose might not be available for younger, larger classes. What follows are some general thoughts on what went well, what didn’t go so well and things that you should absolutely do to make sure students use diigo properly: Always have a print out of the students’ username and password ready. Mine forget theirs. A lot. The first few times students are using diigo and its ‘sticky note’ feature, always start the lesson by reminding them that if they used this feature then they need to make sure that as soon as they start writing a note the select the drop down menu for the ‘privacy’ feature (see below). Students need to decide if the content they are writing is to be shared with the rest of the group (and most of the time with mine, it was), so they need to find the group you have assigned them to belong to and select that. 2Highlighting is fiddly ! In its current state, a few students have managed to highlight whole parts of the website, rather than just the line or two I requested them to do. I don’t think this is deliberate: It’s the same when we get frustrated on word when the highlighter goes crazy. Remind students that if they make this mistake, they can right click on the highlight and an option should come up to erase it. Keep the diigo homepage open. It sounds silly, but a lot of mine forgot to and then sometimes had to go through a few steps to get back to. Remind them to open a seperate browser or tab when using the Internet. Making use of your group’s diigo homepage.My favourite tool is still this. I love the ability to review the annotations we’ve all made on one page, by clicking on the yellow box that I’ve highlighted round the red square below. It makes for a good plenary or start to the next lesson – challenging those sticky note annotations also increases their value and the respect you pay to the feedback students leave, something that leads into our next point. Moderating those pesky post-it notes. There’s nothing to stop students leaving inappropriate notes , publicly, but lets not forget that as long as a teacher is constantly refreshing the group’s homepage, its very easy to keep track of the sticky notes being left on the websites that have been bookmarked. I had one instance of a student posting an inappropriate sticky note, but because I immediately saw it and immediately asked the student to remove it, it seemed to be of little interest to the other students. Perhaps a more interesting notion to consider is the moderation of the conversation that can begin when students begin to respond to each others’ sticky notes