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Tricia Rodriguez

The Accelerated Modular Learning Project: The Evolution into Web-based Courses - 49 views

frank.mtsu.edu/...rvonholzen1.html

shared by Tricia Rodriguez on 19 Oct 11 - No Cached
    • Tricia Rodriguez
      Tricia Rodriguez on 19 Oct 11
       
      To consider about the students: Time, place and style of learning.
  • Information and knowledge
  • paradigm shift
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • formal kind of learning
  • lifelong learning
  • job, learning from others, learning constantly, learning in any place, and at any time.
    • Tricia Rodriguez
      Tricia Rodriguez on 19 Oct 11
       
      Types of learning: job, from others (group), mobile
  • how to reconfigure courses into modules
  • enhance the learning process
  • ncorporation of multimedia
  • other technologies
  • 1997-98 academic year
    • Tricia Rodriguez
      Tricia Rodriguez on 19 Oct 11
       
      Is the goal to move up this chain or to have a wide variety of types?
  • online, multimedia presentations and interactive exercises with instructors and peers
  • synchronous and asynchronous learning,
    • Tricia Rodriguez
      Tricia Rodriguez on 19 Oct 11
       
      This sound very similar to the CTER program at U of I.
  • attendance by students is not required
  • materials are being developed throughout the semester
  • online testing, various forms of assessment, and groupware discussions.
  • fail a module exam are required to retake the exam
  • two scores are averaged.
  • Students are able to learn at their own pace,
  • progress
  • take the lead
  • help others reinforce what they have learned.
  • enhancing/extending
  • learner-centered environment
  • pace to match individual learning needs and styles
  • Web-presence
  • support new learning environments
  • increasing on/off-campus access to the teaching-learning community
    • Tricia Rodriguez
      Tricia Rodriguez on 19 Oct 11
       
      And here is where you can see that this was written in 1998 :)
Drew Rosenshine

Does Teaching Kids To Get 'Gritty' Help Them Get Ahead? : NPR Ed : NPR - 49 views

www.npr.org/...get-gritty-help-them-get-ahead

grit mindset kids teaching dissertation

shared by Drew Rosenshine on 14 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • they need to have a "growth mindset" — the belief that success comes from effort — and not a "fixed mindset" — the notion that people succeed because they are born with a "gift" of intelligence or talent.
  • ducators say they see it all the time: Kids with fixed mindsets who think they just don't have the "gift" don't bother applying themselves. Conversely, kids with fixed mindsets who were always told they were "gifted" and skated through school tend to crumble when they hit their first challenge; rather than risk looking like a loser, they just quit.
  • We don't use the word 'gifted' — ever," Giamportone says. "In our school, you will never hear it." " 'Smart' is like a curse," adds social studies teacher June Davenport.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Instead, the school is plastered with signs and handmade posters promoting a "growth mindset."
  • The focus is always more on putting out effort than on getting the right answers. Teachers have been trained to change the way they see students, and how they speak to them.
  • praise students for their focus and determination.
  • "If I was an outsider and I was hearing this conversation, I might think that this was some kind of hippie-dippy love fest," concedes the teacher, Nathan Cearley. "But what you see is actually a more rigorous and risky learning environment."
  • In three years, Cearley says, he's seen kids grow less afraid of making mistakes, and more willing to ask for help. Test scores at Lenox have jumped 10 to 15 points.
  • The number of schools using Brainology is expected to double this year, from 500 to 1,000.
  • A limited intervention, she says, if not consistently reinforced in and out of school, can only have limited results. "We don't know whether we've had any effect — the jury's out," says Duckworth. "It just seems to me extremely implausible that that's going to permanently and impressively change a child."
  • "Grit as a goal seems to be multiply flawed and very disturbing," says education writer Alfie Kohn. For starters, he says, "the benefits of failure are vastly overstated, and the assumption that kids will pick themselves up and try even harder next time, darn it — that's wishful thinking."
  • if there's a problem with how kids are learning, the onus should be on schools to get better at how they teach — not on kids to get better at enduring more of the same.
    • Drew Rosenshine
      Drew Rosenshine on 15 Jul 14
       
      Yes, but once again this is not an either/or situation.
  • I don't think people can become truly gritty and great at things they don't love," Duckworth says. "So when we try to develop grit in kids, we also need to find and help them cultivate their passions. That's as much a part of the equation here as the hard work and the persistence."
  • But now, three years into the growth-mindset training at Lenox Academy, Blaze says, she believes "you can teach old dogs new tricks."
  • Does Teaching Kids To Get 'Gritty' Help Them Get Ahead?
  • After years of focusing on the theory known as "multiple intelligences" and trying to teach kids in their own style, Hoerr says he's now pulling kids out of their comfort zones intentionally.
Matt Renwick

Do Schools Really Need Principals? - Finding Common Ground - Education Week - 50 views

blogs.edweek.org/...ls_really_need_principals.html

schools principals beliefs+practices

shared by Matt Renwick on 01 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • few are prepared for the demands of a system that can't afford free riders
  • few are prepared for the demands of a system that can't afford free riders
  • few are prepared for the demands of a system that can't afford free riders
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • What kind of legacy will you leave behind when you are finished being a principal?
  • principals who don't provide much feedback, don't seem to know a great deal about learning
  • dreams
Mary Glackin

Report: Teachers Better at Using Tech than Digital Native Students -- THE Journal - 59 views

thejournal.com/...n-digital-native-students.aspx

teachers tech students

shared by Mary Glackin on 14 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Today's school-age learners are no more technology savvy than their teachers.
  • teachers' technology use experiences surpassed students whether it [was] inside or outside of school
  • eacher age had no impact on the kinds of technology skills they have. The gap between them and their students lies with how little opportunity students get to practice technology beyond pursuing their personal interests
  • Mary Glackin on 14 Nov 14
     
    learners are less tech savvy than their teachers
Donny Corkern

Get Ogment - 75 views

getogment.com/home2.html

shared by Donny Corkern on 24 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Wayne Holly on 24 Nov 14
     
    Ogment is a one-of-a-kind lesson creation and resource management tool that helps teachers quickly create, align, share and deliver lessons, assessments or courses using web content or already-existing materials.
Chris Pirkl

Introductions - The Writing Center - 68 views

writingcenter.unc.edu/...introductions

writing introductions

shared by Chris Pirkl on 12 Dec 14 - No Cached
Mary Higgins liked it
  • Your introduction is an important road map for the rest of your paper.
  • your introduction should contain a thesis that will assert your main argument. It should also, ideally, give the reader a sense of the kinds of information you will use to make that argument and the general organization of the paragraphs and pages that will follow. After reading your introduction, your readers should not have any major surprises in store when they read the main body of your paper.
  • our direct answer to the assigned question will be your thesis, and your thesis will be included in your introduction, so it is a good idea to use the question as a jumping off point.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Start by thinking about the question (or questions) you are trying to answer
  • Open with an attention grabber.
  • an intriguing example
  • a provocative quotation
  • a puzzling scenario
  • a vivid and perhaps unexpected anecdote
  • a thought-provoking question
  • Avoid statements like “In this paper, I will argue that Frederick Douglass valued education.”
  • less effective
    • Chris Pirkl
      Chris Pirkl on 12 Dec 14
       
      Highlights by C. Pirkl Dec 2014
  • Chris Pirkl on 12 Dec 14
     
    I've highlighted some of the advice I think is most important in this handout. 
Matt Renwick

Why Change Management Fails | Psychology Today - 51 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...why-change-management-fails

change management psychology

shared by Matt Renwick on 06 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • They fail fundamentally because it is conceived as an outside-in process, moving about parts of the organization, rather than an inside-out process which focuses on change within individuals.
  • 70% of large-scale change programs didn’t meet their goals
  • when changes fail, people often grow cynical.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • change doesn't happen without individual people changing their thinking, beliefs and behavior
  • think differently about their jobs
  • change efforts often falter because individuals overlook the need to make fundamental changes in themselves.
  • managers don’t act as role models for change
  • combine efforts that look outward with those that look inward
    • Matt Renwick
      Matt Renwick on 07 Dec 14
       
      Kind of how we kept our vision statements, but also added the mission, instead of getting rid of the vision altogether.
  • alignment with their own life purposes
  • cognitive dissonance
  • Linking strategic and systemic intervention to genuine self-discovery and self-development by leaders is a far better path to embracing the vision of the organization and to realizing its business goals.
  • behavioral data to affect employee performance
    • Matt Renwick
      Matt Renwick on 07 Dec 14
       
      How we monitor levels of instruction as a school.
  • explain that story to all of the people involved in making change happen
  • Anyone leading a major change program must take the time to think through its "story"
  • change is an inside-out process
D. S. Koelling

Handling Student Frustration - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 40 views

chronicle.com/...30195

assignments expectations student frustration

shared by D. S. Koelling on 28 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • When a student says, “Just tell me what you want,” the student could be speaking from a place of great frustration.
  • if students know what we want them to do and they understand how we will evaluate their efforts, they are more apt to do the work we assign.  They’ll take chances, and they’ll do so without much complaint. If we want students to take chances, they must be able to trust us.
  • Have I met my office hours?  (If not, have I left a note or alerted students to the change?) Is my syllabus online or otherwise available other than on the first day of the semester? Do I return student work in a reasonable amount of time? Do I require a textbook, and am I using that book? Do I respect my students and the knowledge they bring to the classroom? Have I set clear guidelines about assignments, even if the assignment is broad? If I have strict syllabus policies, do I enforce them equally and fairly? Am I creative or innovative in my approach to the subject?  (Am I modeling the kind of behavior/actions I wish to see in my students?) Have I been clear about how interpretive or creative takes on assignments will be evaluated?  (Am I sure I’m not evaluating harshly, for example, if I disagree with the student’s interpretation of the assignment?)
D. S. Koelling

A Perfect Storm in Undergraduate Education, Part I - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher E... - 40 views

chronicle.com/...126451

shared by D. S. Koelling on 28 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • at least 45 percent of undergraduates demonstrated "no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills in the first two years of college, and 36 percent showed no progress in four years."
  • What good does it do to increase the number of students in college if the ones who are already there are not learning much? Would it not make more sense to improve the quality of education before we increase the quantity of students?
  • students in math, science, humanities, and social sciences—rather than those in more directly career-oriented fields—tend to show the most growth in the areas measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment, the primary tool used in their study. Also, students learn more from professors with high expectations who interact with them outside of the classroom. If you do more reading, writing, and thinking, you tend to get better at those things, particularly if you have a lot of support from your teachers.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Increasingly, undergraduates are not prepared adequately in any academic area but often arrive with strong convictions about their abilities.
  • It has become difficult to give students honest feedback.
  • As the college-age population declines, many tuition-driven institutions struggle to find enough paying customers to balance their budgets. That makes it necessary to recruit even more unprepared students, who then must be retained, shifting the burden for academic success away from the student and on to the teacher.
  • Although a lot of emphasis is placed on research on the tenure track, most faculty members are not on that track and are retained on the basis of what students think of them.
  • Students gravitate to lenient professors and to courses that are reputedly easy, particularly in general education.
  • It is impossible to maintain high expectations for long unless everyone holds the line in all comparable courses—and we face strong incentives not to do that.
  • Formerly, full-time, tenured faculty members with terminal degrees and long-term ties to the institution did most of the teaching. Such faculty members not only were free to grade honestly and teach with conviction but also had a deep understanding of the curriculum, their colleagues, and the institutional mission. Now undergraduate teaching relies primarily on graduate students and transient, part-time instructors on short-term contracts who teach at multiple institutions and whose performance is judged almost entirely by student-satisfaction surveys.
  • Contingent faculty members, who are paid so little, routinely teach course loads that are impossible to sustain without cutting a lot of corners.
  • Many colleges are now so packed with transient teachers, and multitasking faculty-administrators, that it is impossible to maintain some kind of logical development in the sequencing of courses.
  • Students may be enjoying high self-esteem, but college teachers seem to be suffering from a lack of self-confidence.
  • Steve Ransom on 28 Feb 11
     
    So many issues here to deal with. Good read.
Chad Loughrige

Categories in Diigo Groups - 83 views

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm excited about the tagging feature, and think that this will be the best way to organize the group. If anyone is interested, I will be presenting a live Ustream bro...

started by Chad Loughrige on 06 Jun 12 4 follow-ups, last by Chad Loughrige on 07 Jun 12
Sharin Tebo

High School Graduates Feel Unprepared For College and Work, Survey Finds - College Boun... - 44 views

blogs.edweek.org/...ads_unprepared_for_future.html

shared by Sharin Tebo on 19 Dec 14 - No Cached
Amy McCorkle liked it
  • 5. Have an assessment late in high school so students can find out what they need for college (77 percent.)
    • Sharin Tebo
      Sharin Tebo on 19 Dec 14
       
      What kind of assessment? I mean, if it is a standardized test, does that really help students prepare for life, whether college-bound or not? 
  • So, how can high schools better serve students and bridge this divide? Respondents' top suggestions for change: 1. Provide opportunities for real-world learning (90 percent);
  • A recent survey of public high school graduates finds about half feel they are unprepared for life after high school and most would have worked harder if they had realized the expectations of college and the workplace.
  • Amy McCorkle on 19 Dec 14
     
    I'm not so sure that I believe that less than 1,500 graduates nationwide over the span of just three graduating classes is exactly representative of all high school grads in America, but at least it was conducted by a nonprofit and not one of our education deformer companies or a textbook publisher. Also, isn't a certain amount of laissez-faire attitude a normal teenage brain condition? "I wish I'd paid more attention in high school" was a major theme of conversation at *my* 20 year high school reunion last year (did I just date myself)  BUT I did feel better prepared in study skills and habits, perhaps because in 1993 we weren't so test-centered. Just sayin' Thanks for sharing!
Toni Smith

10 Great Apps for a Teacher's New iPad | iPad Apps for School - 182 views

ipadapps4school.com/...t-apps-for-a-teachers-new-ipad

ipad

shared by Toni Smith on 29 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Did you receive a gift of a new iPad this year? If so, you’re probably spending this holiday vacation week trying out all kinds of new apps. Here are ten that I recommend getting started with. Evernote is the Swiss Army knife of iPad apps. I use Evernote for
  • a little bit of everything from bookmarking websites to dictating notes to myself. The app automatically syncs with my online Evernote account so that I can access my notes, bookmarks, and saved files from any computer or device that is connected to the web. Learn more in the video below.
  • Evernote is the Swiss Army knife of iPad apps. I use Evernote for a little bit of everything from bookmarking websites to dictating notes to myself. The app automatically syncs with my online Evernote account so that I can access my notes, bookmarks, and saved files from any computer or device that is connected to the web. Learn more in the video below.
Benjamin Allen

Getting A Job Is Not The Purpose Of School - 41 views

www.teachthought.com/...ose-school-is-not-to-get-a-job

educational philosophy vocational training

shared by Benjamin Allen on 21 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • By calling it “school” (rather than learning), and “a job” (rather than work), we’re unwittingly creating a tone of drudgery and compliance that centers the institutions and their processes (grades, academic success and performance), and de-centers the end result (skills–>understanding–>creativity–>wisdom).
  • the vast majority of social ills that plague us–as a planet, not just in one country–stem from a surplus of bad work
  • And because we’ve all had jobs that sucked, it’s easy to shrug it off as a necessary evil in life, but it’s not. Work that demeans, dehumanizes, mechanizes, and depersonalizes individuals also, by design, demean, dehumanize, mechanize, and depersonalize society at large, and telling people to “be thankful they have a job” is an antiquated response that misses the point.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The curse of social conditioning and norm-referencing here is also at play
  • Wendell Berry in a letter he wrote responding to the idea of a “work-life” balance
  • Only in the absence of any viable idea of vocation or good work can one make the distinction implied in such phrases as “less work, more life” or “work-life balance,” as if one commutes daily from life here to work there.
  • If such questions are not asked, then we have no way of seeing or proceeding beyond the assumptions of (the author) and his work-life experts: that all work is bad work; that all workers are unhappily and even helplessly dependent on employers; that work and life are irreconcilable; and that the only solution to bad work is to shorten the workweek and thus divide the badness among more people.”
  • no matter what sort of values a family promotes, the learning process, by design, changes a person
  • Doesn’t the quality of a culture rely in part on a deep, dynamic interaction between those who are adults now, and those who will be soon?” And in that intersection sits education.
  • Getting a job is not the purpose of school. Good work is a shared core of both education and social improvement. I’m not entirely sure what this means for learning on a practical level, but I keep having the idea of diverse learning forms embedded in authentic local communities as a kind of first response.
anonymous

The Internet's Dark Ages - The Atlantic - 51 views

www.theatlantic.com/...409210

archives archiving digital citizenship

shared by anonymous on 13 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • It’s not a place in any reliable sense of the word. It is not a repository. It is not a library. It is a constantly changing patchwork of perpetual nowness.
  • It’s unstable.
  • “Except when it goes, it really goes,” said Jason Scott, an archivist and historian for the Internet Archive. “It’s gone gone. A piece of paper can burn and you can still kind of get something from it. With a hard drive or a URL, when it’s gone, there is just zero recourse.”
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has a trove of cached web pages going back to 1996.
  • It is not just access to knowledge, but the knowledge itself that’s at stake.
  • Ephemerality is built into the very architecture of the web, which was intended to be a messaging system, not a library.
  • And yet there are no robust mechanisms for libraries and museums to acquire, and thus preserve, digital collections.
  • Vaughan was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in
  • The Internet is now considered a great oracle, a place where information lives and knowledge is stitched together.
Maria Nuzzo

Three Elements of Great Communication, According to Aristotle - Scott Edinger - Harvard... - 99 views

blogs.hbr.org/...t_communication_according.html

shared by Maria Nuzzo on 19 Jan 13 - No Cached
Kelly Dau liked it
  • Three Elements of Great Communication, According to Aristotle by Scott Edinger  |   9:00 AM January 17, 2013 Comments (78)         In my nearly 20 years of work in organization development, I've never heard anyone say that a leader communicated too much or too well. On the contrary, the most common improvement suggestion I've seen offered up on the thousands of 360 evaluations I've reviewed over the years is that it would be better if the subject in question learned to communicate more effectively. What makes someone a good communicator? There's no mystery here, not since Aristotle identified the three critical elements — ethos, pathos, and logos. — thousands of years ago. Ethos is essentially your credibility — that is, the reason people should believe what you're saying. In writing this blog I made an effort to demonstrate my ethos in the introduction, and here I'll just add that I have a degree in communication studies (emphasis in rhetoric for those who want the details) for good measure. In some cases, ethos comes merely from your rank within an organization. More commonly, though, today's leaders build ethos most
  • Jennie Snyder on 19 Jan 13
     
    Three aspects of communication as outlined by Aristotle.
Sharin Tebo

Building Attention Span - The New York Times - 75 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-building-attention-span.html

shared by Sharin Tebo on 16 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • ou toggle over to check your phone during even the smallest pause in real life. You feel those phantom vibrations even when no one is texting you. You have trouble concentrating for long periods.
    • Sharin Tebo
      Sharin Tebo on 16 Jul 15
       
      This is a connection for me to the technology and devices article we read today and did a quotation mingle around during our Disciplinary Literacy Institute. No kidding that we get a shot of dopamine or 'high' when our phone goes ding, or it vibrates. 
  • Online life is so delicious
  • You live in a state of perpetual anticipation because the next social encounter is just a second way.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • xpert online gamers have a great capacity for short-term memory, to process multiple objects simultaneously, to switch flexibly between tasks and to quickly process rapidly presented information.
  • Fluid intelligence
    • Sharin Tebo
      Sharin Tebo on 16 Jul 15
       
      I've never heard this before!
  • Research at the University of Oslo and elsewhere suggests that people read a printed page differently than they read off a screen. They are more linear, more intentional, less likely to multitask or browse for keywords.
  • Crystallized intelligence
    • Sharin Tebo
      Sharin Tebo on 16 Jul 15
       
      Something else i have never heard of.
  • Crystallized intelligence accumulates over the years and leads ultimately to understanding and wisdom.
    • Sharin Tebo
      Sharin Tebo on 16 Jul 15
       
      So maybe this kind of intelligence, then, is the "learning is a consequence of thinking"?
danthomander

Meet the New Common Core - The New York Times - 19 views

www.nytimes.com/...meet-the-new-common-core.html

shared by danthomander on 17 Jun 15 - Cached
  • Standardized tests certainly aren’t going anywhere. States that have dumped exams aligned with the Common Core aren’t dumping high-stakes testing; they’re just switching to new tests, like the ACT’s Aspire. (Other ACT offerings include the Explore, the Engage and the Compass. Apparently standardized tests are titled by the same people who name midsize sedans.)
  • The Common Core is the way math was taught before. True, the new South Carolina standards are 92 percent aligned with the Common Core. But the Common Core was 97 percent aligned with the math standards South Carolina was using before! The term “number sentence,” which the comedian Stephen Colbert mocked, is 50 years old, and the kind of problem it describes appears in textbooks from the 1920s.
  • danthomander on 17 Jun 15
     
    "Standardized tests certainly aren't going anywhere. States that have dumped exams aligned with the Common Core aren't dumping high-stakes testing; they're just switching to new tests, like the ACT's Aspire. (Other ACT offerings include the Explore, the Engage and the Compass. Apparently standardized tests are titled by the same people who name midsize sedans.)"
Lorinda Cain-Bowles

Study: RTI Practice Falls Short of Promise - Education Week - 31 views

www.edweek.org/...ce-falls-short-of-promise.html

rti study

shared by Lorinda Cain-Bowles on 09 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • "We don't want to have people say that these findings say these schools aren't doing RTI right; this turns out to be what RTI looks like when it plays out in daily life."
  • "Students are missing a lot of broader things that are going to make a difference in their ability to put it all together in functional reading."
  • students with "mild and relatively mild learning problems" are not representative anymore of the students targeted for Tier 2 interventions. "Over time, in many places what's happened is RTI has been deliberately used as a kind of general education substitution for special education. My strong sense is that over time, more and more kids with greater and greater severity of learning problems are being served in an RTI framework."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • "The most common implementation of RTI is fairly rigid,"
  • she said, with schools often using a single test to identify students for Tier 2 and a standard set of interventions once they get there. For example, she noted that the study found that small group instruction and interventions in RTI schools were more likely to focus on phonics for students below grade level than at grade level. "Right there you have a clue that the interventions are focused on these foundational skills and not as much on comprehension," she sai
  • Lorinda Cain-Bowles on 09 Nov 15
     
    RTI study shows process isn't working as hoped.
Roland Gesthuizen

FILLING THE TOOL BOX - 158 views

fno.org/toolbox.html

questioning research teaching education literacy science technology

shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 18 Mar 11 - Cached
  • As one of the primary goals of education is to develop autonomous but interdependent thinkers, students deserve frequent opportunities to shape and direct classroom inquiry. To fuel this inquiry, it is also essential that we validate the importance of curiosity in the process of learning. While curiosity may have killed the cat, there is no reason for us to kill curiosity
  • Critical to all of these activities, however, is some kind of guided practice in how to think through such questions.
  • Roland Gesthuizen on 18 Mar 11
     
    " Most of the strategies described below have been developed and tested by teachers in Princeton, Madison and elsewhere. They are offered as practical, effective activities that help shift the focus of classrooms from teacher orchestrated mastery and memory of information to student processing of information to create understanding and improve problem-solving."
  • Roland Gesthuizen on 18 Mar 11
     
    Some great ways to stop killing curiosity and stimulate questioning in science and technology. An oldie but a goodie.
Maggie Tsai

The Classroom » Using Diigo for Organizing the Web for your Class - 13 views

theclassroom.ca/...anizing-the-web-for-your-class

diigo education review

shared by Maggie Tsai on 05 Aug 07 - Cached
  • Using Diigo for Organizing the Web for your Class 31 07 2007 A good friend of mine, Randy Lyseng, has been telling people of the tremendous power and educational value that can be gained from social bookmarking in the classroom. His personal favourite is Diigo. My preference is a social bookmarking tool called http://diigo.com. With diigo, you can highlight, add stick notes and make your comments private or public. (Randy Lyseng, Lyseng Tech: Social Bookmarking, November 2006) After listening to Randy praise Diigo at every opportunity, I finally started playing with the site (and corresponding program, more on that in a bit) this summer (I know Randy - I’m slow to catch on…)As I started to play with the system, my mind started reeling with all the possibilities. First off, like any other social bookmarking tool, Diigo allows you to put all your favorites/bookmarks in one “central” location. Students can access them from ANY computer in the world (talk about the new WWW: whatever, whenever, where ever). They just open up your Diigo page, and there are all the links. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Diigo’s power lies in it’s group annotations. That’s right, people can now write in the margins of webpages. You can highlight passages of interest, write notes, and even write a blog entry directly from another webpage, quoting passages right from the original text. Sounds great - but to do all that it must be complicated right? Nope. To use these advanced features all you need to do is run the Diigo software. This can either be done using a bookmarklet or by downloading and installing the Diigo toolbar. While both have basically the same features, the toobar is less finicky, and allows you to use contextual menus to access features quickly. I also find the toolbar’s highlighting and sticky notes to be easier to read. Ok fine… I can leave notes on webpages - so what? Here’s an example. I’m thinking about having my 7B’s record radio plays. I’ve looked them up online and found many scripts from all the old classics available. However many also contain the old endorsements from tobacco and other companies. So I go to a play that I’d like to my students to record and highlight the old commercial. If they’re using diigo when they access this page they’ll see the same text highlighted in pink, and when they mouse over the highlighted text they’ll get a hidden message from me - “I’d like you to write a new advertisement for this section. What other advertisement do you think we could write for here? Write an ad for a virtue or trait that you think is important. For example - “Here’s a news flash for every person in Canada. It’s about a sensational, new kind of personality that will make you the envy of all those around you. It’s call trustworthiness. Why with just a pinch of this great product….” They now have a writing assignment to go along with the recording of the radio play. Adding assignments is just one possibility. You can ask questions about the site, or have students carry on conversations about the text. Perhaps about the validity of some information. These notes can be made private (for your eyes only), public, or for a select group of people. You could use the same webpage for multiple classes, and have a different set of sticky notes for each one! Diigo will also create a separate webpage for each group you create, helping you organize your bookmarks/notes further! This technology is useful for any class, but I think is a must have for any group trying to organize something along the lines of the 1 to 1 project. I’m hoping to convince all the core teachers to set up a group page for their classes, and organize their book marks there! I’ve already started one for my 7B Language Arts Class! One of the first questions I was asked when I started looking at this site, and more importantly at the bookmarklets and toolbar was is it secure? Will it bring spyware onto our systems? How about stability? I’ve currently been running the Diigo bookmarklet and toolbar on 3 different browsers, Explorer, Firefox, and Safari (sorry, there’s no Safari toolbar yet), across 4 different computers and 2 different platforms with no problems. I’ve also run every virus and spyware scan I can think of, everything checks out clean. I’ve also done an extensive internet check, and can’t find any major problems reported by anyone else. To my mind it’s an absolutely fantastic tool for use in the classroom. Thanks Diigo! And thanks Randy for pointing me in the right direction!
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