Clif Mims

Why would teachers/ learners use Diigo?

I've been asked this question no less than a dozen times in the past week. Let's begin compiling a list of reasons.

NOTE: This same topic is simultaneously being discussed on my blog. You are welcome to participate both places.

Clif Mims

"Why would teachers use Diigo?" Come share your responses.

All the best,
Clif

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Clif Mims

Why would teacher use diigo?

...Please come join the conversation, Michael.

Clif Mims

Clif Mims

cheesesteak11

bookmarking and organization, lesson planning, share stuff with kids, online discussions, share information among teachers--team, grade level, school or district wide

Clif Mims

Ann Kieser

student collaboration for discovering information
using the comment ability to analyze and evaluate websites

Joanne Bennett

I am running an Applied Science course and I am going to run an assignment where I set up students on diigo....get them to research websites for information.... collaborate using diigo to build up highlighted text and add comments.

I think this is a cognitive way for students to interact with text and helps them think about what they are reading. Rather than just cutting and pasting I am asking them to consider the text and the meaning of the text. Being selective and researching skills are so important and will move the research agenda further foward.

I am excited by the possibilities of diigo.....also that collaborative write board tool is another application I am going to be using to facilitate group research.

Scott Weidig

interesting conversation started by Clif Mims this could be a launching pad for a collaborative learning project. Love your input if you are interested.

Laurie Korte

Consolidation of bookmarks residing on different computers, sites, etc. Sharing of bookmarks as well as ideas, plans, best practices, class cross communication. Feeling like a supporting, valuable, important part of a technological community.
Laurie Korte
(featheredflower)

Darren Kuropatwa

I just had an epiphany reading this conversation!! But I have to go. to the store before dinner. I'll be back. ;-) Don;t mean to be a tease, just wanted to leave this comment as a place holder for me. (Is that bad diigoquette?)

Liz Davis

Hey Christy, Thanks for joining Diigo. Here is a conversation that is centering around how to use diigo in the classroom. What are your thoughts?

Liz Davis

Darren,
You really are a tease! I look forward to learning more about your epiphany.
Don't make us wait too long.

adina sullivan

Ann, I agree with the idea of using the comments to analyze and evaluate websites. Given a set of criteria, students (from elem to Univ) could demonstrate whether or not they have the critical thinking and information evaluation skills necessary to navigate and use the web successfully (still working on that myself)

This would of course be in addition to what Cheesesteak11 mentions above.

Clif Mims

I think teachers with multiple sections and/or preps can easily customize information/ resources/ activities using Diigo's groups, lists, and conversations. This can all even be done at the time that a bookmark is made (I could send the bookmark to my 7th grade math group/ list, my pre-algebra group/ list, but not my 7th grade social studies group),

John Blake

Teams and grade level teacher groups, a.k.a. Professional Learning Communities, are something our district has been trying to foster. We have started a grassroots movement to use a wiki to share lesson plans. Finding time to train teachers that are interested in learning to use the wiki is a real challenge. Time is money! I am not sure how Diigo would or could do it, but if it have a lesson plan wiki that could help teachers have one tool to learn it might help. Online discussions are dangerous if you have teachers that lack interpersonal skills or have a conflict with another teacher.

Lists with the web slide feature is an exciting feature. Our teachers are working on Reading in the Content for professional development. We meet, sign in on our clip board, watch the video, answer the questions and talk face to face. However, that is the last time the topic comes up. What a waste of time!

If we could share web resources by using the cool highlighter feature or sticky notes and extend our chat about how to help our students become better readers, then the PD would mean more to us. Teachers need to collaborate.

Hey-- Darren Kuropatwa, I am waiting to read what you had to say!

Maggie Tsai

Rob De Lorenzo

I'm very new to Diigo so I'm still trying to sort out my thoughts concerning this tool. Just wondering - conversations can take place in any LMS and common bookmarks can be shared using RSS feeds from del.icio.us.

I think what may win me over is the ability to use Diigo as a research tool by using tagged bookmarks. There's that collective intelligence at work again.

I do like the fact that bookmarks can be saved in Diigo and del.icio.us at the same time.

Maggie Tsai

Darren Kuropatwa

OK, sorry about the tease. After having time to think on it a little more, it's not so revolutionary and may actually not work at all. Here's my idea:

My students write scribe posts on their class blogs summarizing what they have learned each day; kind of like a text book authoured by students for students. The thought occurred to we could use diigo to do two things:

(a) aggregate bookmarks the students make of websites valuable to their learning (we already do this using del.icio.us), and

(b) use the highlighting/sticky note feature to "mark up" our "textbook" (blog) with comments, observations and corrections to specific words, phrases or paragraphs of each post.

This second thing was my "epiphany". It would really drench the blog with meaningful UGC. In order to make it work I would want to allow anyone with a diigo account to be able to add and read the highlights/sticky notes any time they visit one of my class blogs. Ideally, even people without a diigo account should be able to see these things but I can get around that by putting a badge on the blog or an "editor's note" at the bottom of each post. They'd still have to sign up for a diigo account in order to access this additional content though.

Concerns: Spam. Inappropriate comments. Students accidentally sharing personal information.

I teach them not to do that last one but some have made slips in the past. The essential issue for me would be to have some way to monitor (receive an update any time someone adds to the page content via diigo) and edit the highlights/sticky notes (does this feature have an easily recognizable "short" name?) so that I could delete inappropriate content if necessary. It strikes me that this doesn't really jibe with the whole social networking ethos but in order for me to make this work I would need that sort of functionality. Is this possible with the current implementation of diigo? I think I read in a forum somewhere that the good folks at diigo were considering an education version. If so, I think this would be an important functionality of that sort of service.

As I've thought of this some more, I began to wonder: How would this be different from having students leave comments on blog posts? I know the "look and feel" would be completely different but what would be the motivation, from a student's perspective, such that they'd rather sign up for and use diigo as opposed to just leaving a comment on the blog post?

I'd love to hear what others think about all this.

Cheers!

Wade Ren

"The essential issue for me would be to have some way to monitor (receive an update any time someone adds to the page content via diigo) and edit the highlights/sticky notes"

Currently you can do this using the rss feed on "All Annotations" of a url. We will make monitoring pages even easier a little later

Clif Mims

Darren,

You've raised some interesting questions and ideas. Perhaps making comments on blogs and with diigo would be considered very similar activities. With diigo, your students could also use the highlighting feature and sticky notes can be strategically placed on a page with the information with which it corresponds. I think these kinds of features move away from simple blog commenting and move towards something like the Track Changes feature in MS Word which lends itself more towards collaboration and the iterative process.

Maggie Tsai

Good point... Fundamentally there is a difference between Diigo's annotation and traditional blog commenting. Diigo in-situ highlight and sticky note allows fine-grained discussion to specific part of a webpage - which opens up the possibility for more meaningful exchanges...

Some educators are using Diigo as "invisible ink" to do edit suggestion for students' online writing assignment, and interact with students, etc...

Maggie Tsai

Wade Ren

Personally, I think in-situ commenting encourages precision in thinking and argument.

Wade Ren

Let me also share how my daughter (11, 7th grade)) and her friends use Diigo. Every students in her class are required to have a laptop pc.

Many of their homeworks have to do with writing up and presenting some subject, e.g. Air Pollution (as a result, her powerpoint skills are now better than mine:-) )

Since the easiest way to find inf is on the web, she has been using Diigo to collect and organize her findings.

Often, the project is done by a team of 3-4 students. So they have started experimenting with collecting information to a Diigo group.

Hilary Reynolds

Diigo is very useful for allowing peer reviews of assignments. Students place the assignment on the web and other students critique it. This removes the need for specialised peer review modules in some Learning Management Systems.


Also it is perhaps valuable to draw the distinction here between teaching and learning. Because someone teaches, people do not necessarily learn. The resultant and related question then is "Why would learners use Diigo?"

Jeremy Price

I agree with Maggie that with the sticky notes feature there is opportunity for both fine-grained and potentially deep conversations within the context of the materials themselves by teachers and students. In addition, teachers can embed all kinds of scaffolding into web-based materials with Diigo: questions for discussion (either online, or to prepare students for an in-class discussion); highlighting critical features; asking students to define words, terms, or concepts in their own words/language; providing definitions of difficult/new terms (in various media, such as embedding an image in the sticky note); and providing models of interpreting materials.

I put together a demonstration on an existing page for a presentation for a course on bilingual learners and literacy development at http://whyfiles.org/238earthday/index.php?g=1.txt. In order to see everything, I think you need to join the BC SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics) group (http://groups.diigo.com/groups/bc_sfl) in order to see the embedded scaffolding. It's a public group, so anyone can join.

Cathy Evanoff

I love Diigo from a professional learning stand point. But I can’t quite wrap my brain around how to get 100 5th graders using Diigo. Do I create a generic account for 5th grade? Do I have each student create his/her own account? Can a teacher have “delete” rights just in case a sticky note appears that is not appropriate? The sticky note & highlighting tools are perfect for the collection of resources for 5th grades geography questions of the week. I need guidance!!

Cathy Evanoff

Thought you might like this.

Janice Stearns

Laura Deisley

You were wondering about Diigo. I am still reeling from its "intenseness" (nice adjective). This conversation about classroom app is evolving and offering some insights not unlike The Awesome Highlighter/My Sticky Note mashup. Thought you might be interested.

Clif Mims

Peer reviews! I hadn't thought of that one, Hilary. I'll share that with our teachers.

Clif Mims

Hillary Reynolds (in comment #27) makes a very good point. He writes, "...it is perhaps valuable to draw the distinction here between teaching and learning. Because someone teaches, people do not necessarily learn. The resultant and related question then is "Why would learners use Diigo?" "

I think this question is also worth discussing. So, ...

... Why would learners use Diigo?

Maggie Tsai

Wade Ren

We will soon make it easy for authorized teachers to create many student accounts

Darren Kuropatwa

@Wade Brilliant!! Thanks for that. I'm assuming that would also allow teachers to edit the contributions made by students if necessary.

An important part of that functionality would also be to have the ability to edit/delete the contributions made by others on a specific url, such as a class blog, so that inappropriate comments or spam could be deleted when it comes in. Also, a moderation feature might be important here, particularly in light of the current trials and tribulations Al Upton and the minilegends are having in Australia (http://alupton.edublogs.org/ — check out "Update 3" in particular).

Claire Hertz

\

Claire Hertz

You're a mind reader Wade - teachers able to set up accounts for their students - that is exactly what K-12 needs. I am so impressed with the support you have given us.

Hilary Reynolds

The ability to add student accounts will be extraordinarily useful.

Hilary Reynolds

Clif,

Thanks for the kind comment. It seems to me that many educators in Higher Education operate in a pedagogical vacuum. What is required to become a lecturer is domain knowledge (which is obviously needed) and knowledge of education is deemed unnecessary, For me the pedagogical basis of a tool such as Diigo is found in the ideas of Social Constructivism which postulates that we learn in social settings and the construct within Social Constructivism called the Zone of Proximal Development which can be stated as we learn in the presence of a more capable peer. The social annotations enabled by Diigo allow exactly this to happen. But a caveat (at least for me) is that it must take place within an environment which has some structure to it without being oppressive.

I have another thought vaguely brewing. I will post it when has fully fermented.

Michael Baker

My take on Diigo is...

Diigo allows collective intelligence to happen. As Hilary mentioned in #42, we learn in the presence of a more capable peer. I can't really disagree, but I'd like to replace 'peer' with 'network'. In traditional social networks, the focus is whatever the driving members of the network make it. Diigo allows for the focus to go back to specific content. You bookmark a site and send it out to a Diigo group or Twitter network. This resource becomes an instant conversation starter or at least a common piece of content between members of a network. The diverse experiences of the network can then discuss the resource and the unique perspectives of each of the members can sprout new ideas into the collective. You get a lot of "I didn't think of things that way" or "That would never fly for me, because..."

Organizing resources is another part of Diigo. No matter what the tagging system becomes or the ability to rate content develops into, the major benefit of Diigo is connecting people and ideas.

MB

Ann Kieser

In regards to using diigo for education, esp. in the k-12 regulated and monitored environment, would it be possible to keep others from seeing the friends of other students? Perhaps we are already to control this and I did not discover this function.

Wade Ren

Ann,

Right now, you can not hide your friends. But I can see the need for that and we will add an option setting to hide friends

Maggie Tsai

Mark,

Would you like to share some of your experience?

Mark Marino

Sure,

I can write more soon.

I use Diigo to help my college writing students learn about Social Bookmarking, to conduct research, and to offer feedback to one another when workshopping papers.

I've also created a little stand-alone exercise I call Social Bookmarking soulmates, which features a combination of Diigo and a few other tools.

See it here:
http://writerresponsetheory.org/wordpress/2008/03/06/social-bookmarking-soulmates/

There's a somewhat lighter video that goes with the exercise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw9-FMdpYpo

Melanie Jennings

I'm going to step it down into the realm of the concrete and give an example of how Diigo might be used in my classroom. Say we're researching a particular topic--I don't know... photosynthesis. I might gather several sites that I want my students to use in their studies. I group the sites by appropriate tagging and send the students directly to the URL for that grouping of sites. This is key for younger kids who could spend the better part of a class period typing in the URLs! (Even better, I could drop a shortcut on the desktop of each student, thus avoiding any typing at all!!)

In the comments section, I might place instructions which are specific for the content to be found on the site, which the students can read before even opening the page.

Highlights can be used to direct students to the most important information on the site. Again, with younger students, this is important. I want them to have access to rigorous content, but many sites with that kind of content go into much greater depth than you need for your students' skill level. Highlighting directs the students to the meat of the text. **By the way, this is an excellent accommodation for students whose reading level is not up to par with their classmates.

Then comes the sticky notes. I might use sticky notes to provide writing prompts for the students. Students can reply to my stickies with their written responses to the highlighted text.

I had just started using the "Groups" feature in the last version to confine the classroom comments to our group, thus avoiding excessive internet graffiti in the larger world, but haven't played with it in the new version, so it may be different now.

Good discussion!
Melanie

Jocelyn Chappell

Thanks Melanie, that is really helpful. I teach Secondary special needs where the reading age lags some six year -- I am just beginning to see the possibilties for Diigo in my classroom.

Joc

Clif Mims

Melanie,

Diigo certainly offers the ability to do a lot more than just share bookmarks. I appreciate you sharing your "concrete" example.

All the best,
Clif

Clif Mims

This conversation continues to be practical and engaging. Please share your ideas and perspective with us.

All the best,
Clif

Ellen Paxton

I think you need to let us all know once you try this...sounds intriguing (and workable). Thanks for sharing.

Alice Mercer

Teaching Language Learners, and Elementary, this is really key.

Frank in Mexico

I am just replying to test the reply feature, not actually replying to the thread. Guess that I am saying that after I evaluate the "new" Diigo a bit more perhaps I can contribute to this discussion. But, thanks for inviting me whoever did that.

Cheers
Frank

Lisa Parisi

Sorry to jump in to this so late. Especially since my comment will end up at the bottom of the list but here goes anyway.

The big difference between commenting here and commenting in a blog would be the specificity of the comments. In Diigo, students would be forced to choose one part of the text and comment on it. In blogging, the comments (at least for my fifth graders) tend to be very general (Great writing - I agree - Same thing happened to me, etc.) I can see students doing what I've been asking them to do all year...find one phrase, one sentence, one word that stands out and add your connection, question, etc. So in this way, I see the benefits of using diigo with students.

I do wish, however, that there could be mini-accounts - like in VoiceThread. One account for me and each child would have an identity within that account. Then I wouldn't have to worry about email addresses and remembering passwords.

Alice Mercer

Lisa, I get around teh mini account issue by having them add their first name to a sticky/comment. Really not different than voice thread ex. no pic/avatar (since the VT sub accts are not pw)

Can I add to this? A lot of time in elementary we need to teach students to take what from them are very text dense expository passages, and focus on a sentence, or sentences. Diigo annotations help a lot with that. Also, I don't want a paragraph from them. My writing assignments (given the 45 min periods I have) are only 2-3 sentences, and in a Diigo exercise, one would be good, so a blog is not needed.

Maggie Tsai

Join us!

alexandra m. pickett

hi cliff: thanks for inviting me to this very interesting conversation. I am very new to diigo, but i believe there is something very powerful here in this tool. I plan to use it in a summer course i am teaching online in a master's program and am in the process evaluating it for instructional and professional development purposes.

So far these are my thoughts:

I think I can easily mark up online student work with this tool.

I think online students can mark up eachother's online work with this tool. and discuss. One of the course activities is to use a rubric to evaluate an online course that the students will each be building as the main project for the course. The course review, I think, can be done using diigo. I think... not sure yet.

 

Online students can easily create annotated bibliographies of web resources
in directed learning activities AND share and discuss them with others
in the class.

This resource can grow and be available for the online course from term to term.

In addition, for webenhanced courses, this is an awesome, easy, slick, cool way to incorporate some very cool online enhancements to a f2f course that completely bypasses all the extra unnecessary flotsam you get with a full on CMS/LMS. you get a lot of functional features bang for the "buck" in this tool. It is a slick tool with a lot of functionality to suport interaction/collaboration, etc.

When i have my university administrator's hat on i also see great potential as a tool to facilitate and enhance community and for professional development. I have an extended staff of 50-100 online instructional designers that i could use this tool with to aggregate links and info and resources and networking. We have over 3,000 online faculty that we could use this with to support them with info and resources and networking - differenciating between the needs of new online faculty and experienced online faculty... there is potential for discipline specific resources and info for online faculty... and it goes on.

As i said i am exploring this tool for its potential, and i think there is something here.

I have several questions:

Can a group be open for viewing by the public, but closed to participation unless you are a member of the group. I think so.

Also, can you export stuff out... to archive it, keep it safe, take it to another tool?

Alex

 

Alice Mercer

Hey, there will a Making Connections show with Maggie Tsai tomorrow 4/7 @ 6 p.m. EDT and can be found at http://edtechtalk.com/live
It's a webcast/streamed show featuring education technology. Great spot to ask questions and chat with folks who have used this for a while (Cathy E. the host has been on Diigo for a year).

John Blake

Should 4/7 be 4/8? Thanks for sharing. Maggie is omni present and I would really like to her what she has to say about Diigot's possible edu version.