Andy, Just read about your progress in using diigo with your students. I just signed on with diigo since furl merged with diigo. Wow, looks like you are doing some cool things. My students are Middle School in New Jersey, not great readers....so research is a concern. I'm a school librarian and look forward to using some of your ideas. Love those screen shots.
All the best, Janice
Andy Whiteway wrote: > just to let everyone know - i have begun using diigo in the classroom with students and will be updating my progress on in at http://andywhiteway.wordpress.com. Would welcome any feedback or earing what others are doing in a similar situation! > > Andy
I just started using diigo with my year 9's also. Whilst I was well familiar with social bookmarking, diigo is really much more than just social bookmarking, it's a true social networking site. I discovered this the hard way with my 9's. So here's some advice to those contemplating the move:
1. Get an educator's account, then get a written list of the students' emails and add them manually. (I avoided this step thinking it would be inconvenient and was so, so wrong. It's much easier to start a group, and add the students manually.) 2. When they get started they are quite excited and immediately test all the boundaries. So you will need to make your expectations clear and that they understand that using diigo in class is different from using facebook at home. Also note that diigo has this annoying feature which allows one user to spam (with hundreds of messages instantly) once they've friended each other. Sadly I've had to discipline students for inappropriate use. They'll have a tendency to do this until clear boundaries are established. 3. Give them clear instruction on how to bookmark and tag, as well as highlight and comment pages - and why this is useful for students. They won't "get" this automatically. Provide examples you've set up for yourself. 4. Have fun! Whilst I mention disciplining, this was an extreme case. I was worried about the parent and teacher backlash, especially if a student did something really inappropriate. But most students start to get into it once they understand it and how it can be useful, as well as how it has similar features to other social networking sites they use. Once they start communicating with each other via diigo, they start to get into it. And right now my class seems to be settling down and using it sensibly for their research assignment.
Those of you that have tried out Diigo with middle/high school students, how do you address concerns about the accessibility it presents to unknown users? I noticed students can easily wander into other groups, including some in the "Romance & Relationships" category that sound very inappropriate. I would love to use Diigo with students, but I worry that encouraging use of this tool could be construed as condoning some of these inappropriate/risky areas and present a liability issue. Your thoughts?
Just wanted to say that i've blogged an evaluation of using diigo with my class at http://tinyurl.com/peep8z - useful info on there if you want to start using diigo with your class!
I just finished a research unit with 400 8th graders using diigo. My team of teachers loved the site as a way to share resources, we had several kids use the note taking and highlighting functions as a replacement for the more traditional note cards. This was a great way to "hook" those kids who love tech, but may be reluctant readers/writers. We write a p[persuasive research paper so lots of our kids set up lists according to their topics. It was pretty powerful. Our concern was one already voiced, even though we had a education account it still seemed pretty easy to wander out into the great wide open. Personal philosophy is we need to teach kids how to handle web 2.0 and all its interactivity (good and bad) but it might also be nice if diigo could just close some of the social networking abilities to education accounts.
Andy Whiteway wrote: > Just wanted to say that i've blogged an evaluation of using diigo with my class at http://tinyurl.com/peep8z - useful info on there if you want to start using diigo with your class!
I'm interested to see where this conversation goes next. There's some great information and pointers here. Thanks for the blog link, Andy. I'll be keeping up with what you're writing.
In just over two weeks, I defend my doctoral dissertation prospectus. Over the next year, I'll be investigating the use of Diigo to help students improve writing to specific audiences--as the focus of my dissertation). I'm working specifically with college students, but I'm keeping up with the dialogue in K-12 as well. I think we can learn a lot from each other.
Just read about your progress in using diigo with your students. I just signed on with diigo since furl merged with diigo. Wow, looks like you are doing some cool things. My students are Middle School in New Jersey, not great readers....so research is a concern. I'm a school librarian and look forward to using some of your ideas. Love those screen shots.
All the best,
Janice
Andy Whiteway wrote:
> just to let everyone know - i have begun using diigo in the classroom with students and will be updating my progress on in at http://andywhiteway.wordpress.com. Would welcome any feedback or earing what others are doing in a similar situation!
>
> Andy
I just started using diigo with my year 9's also. Whilst I was well familiar with social bookmarking, diigo is really much more than just social bookmarking, it's a true social networking site. I discovered this the hard way with my 9's. So here's some advice to those contemplating the move:
1. Get an educator's account, then get a written list of the students' emails and add them manually. (I avoided this step thinking it would be inconvenient and was so, so wrong. It's much easier to start a group, and add the students manually.)
2. When they get started they are quite excited and immediately test all the boundaries. So you will need to make your expectations clear and that they understand that using diigo in class is different from using facebook at home. Also note that diigo has this annoying feature which allows one user to spam (with hundreds of messages instantly) once they've friended each other. Sadly I've had to discipline students for inappropriate use. They'll have a tendency to do this until clear boundaries are established.
3. Give them clear instruction on how to bookmark and tag, as well as highlight and comment pages - and why this is useful for students. They won't "get" this automatically. Provide examples you've set up for yourself.
4. Have fun! Whilst I mention disciplining, this was an extreme case. I was worried about the parent and teacher backlash, especially if a student did something really inappropriate. But most students start to get into it once they understand it and how it can be useful, as well as how it has similar features to other social networking sites they use. Once they start communicating with each other via diigo, they start to get into it. And right now my class seems to be settling down and using it sensibly for their research assignment.
Best wishes, sol
Andy Whiteway wrote:
> Just wanted to say that i've blogged an evaluation of using diigo with my class at http://tinyurl.com/peep8z - useful info on there if you want to start using diigo with your class!
In just over two weeks, I defend my doctoral dissertation prospectus. Over the next year, I'll be investigating the use of Diigo to help students improve writing to specific audiences--as the focus of my dissertation). I'm working specifically with college students, but I'm keeping up with the dialogue in K-12 as well. I think we can learn a lot from each other.
I'll be posting many of my references to my Diigo account and blogging a good bit of my dissertation at http://prelimsandbeyond.wordpress.com/.