As demonstrated in the picture above, social bookmarking is a technology trend that is on the rise and that many websites are trying to monopolize on. While studying for this week’s topic I decided that I would sign up for one of these social bookmarking sites so that I could really test out what the hype was all about. I signed up for the site Diigo.com because it seemed to be one of the most popular, and I chose it over other sites because this one talked about having a highlighting and post-it note option which sparked my interest because this is how I commonly mark up my textbooks. I must say that I found this website very straight forward, and it seemed like such a convenient and common sense technique which makes me wonder why I haven’t been using this for years! I loved that this site had the option to drag a diigolet button into the taskbar so that I can easily bring it up when I want to highlight something on a website. It is a quick way to get the important facts that I liked from a website and I like that the site automatically loads it onto my own page so that I don’t have to keep the article open, I can close it and come back to it later. This is especially helpful while doing research for any type of project because when you view your own page, you can compare all the information gathered from various highlighted sites by viewing the quotes side by side.
So, naturally as any teacher does, I started thinking about how I could use a technology like this in the classroom to enhance communication. I immediately realized that this website would be handy for a teacher because we always have websites that we want our kids to check out, but young kids have a hard time remembering these websites or they lose any piece of paper that you write it on. However, if a teacher had a class page with a very easy login, the kids could just go to this one site and find all of the websites that a teacher has referred to lately. This made me think back to my recent PS2 practicum and how many times I had to keep writing the same websites on the board over and over again. We had a class website with student exemplars that the kids wanted to show their parents so I always had to keep writing that one on the board. We also had this really fun bridge building game that kids had a hard time remembering the title for and so I always had to help them find it on Google. I also remember the difficulties of trying to make a list of kid-safe research sites available as a document that the kids could access and click through themselves on the student server. All of these examples are things that could’ve been so much more efficient if these websites had just been available to them on an online list that they could access anytime – hence, the beauty of a website like Diigo.
Not only would it be great for teachers to have these links with their students, but also for kids to share great resources and to use as a collaboration tool as well! I started imagining how kids could have a place to post additional information about a topic we talked about today. For example, if kids were curious about how lightening works, I could tell them to research it in their spare time, and they could highlight facts that they found to the class Diigo so that we could look at it as a class when we have a spare minute. Or if kids were doing a collaborative project on the same topic in a Diigo group, they could highlight facts that they found and that way they could compare results side-by-side on their group page to see what sources were the most credible or useful. This technology does create lots of possibilities for gathering good data, and I like that you can add sticky-notes (annotations) as well because that gives the teacher the chance to pin in a quick side comment, a clarification, or a question on that topic.
I also read an interesting article called “37 Ways Teachers Can Use Pinterest in the Classroom” that talked about some good ways to use Pinterest – another form of social bookmarking to enhance a classroom as well. Although it raised some really interesting ideas, I know that if I start talking about Pinterest now I will never finish this post because it is my favorite website in the whole world! On the topic of good websites, this week we also submitted an email entry to the class explaining what the 3 most important features of a website are, what some good web authoring tools are, and 3 reasons why a website of our choice (I obviously chose Pinterest) is an effective website. Check out my response to these questions in the “Effective Websites” button below!
So, naturally as any teacher does, I started thinking about how I could use a technology like this in the classroom to enhance communication. I immediately realized that this website would be handy for a teacher because we always have websites that we want our kids to check out, but young kids have a hard time remembering these websites or they lose any piece of paper that you write it on. However, if a teacher had a class page with a very easy login, the kids could just go to this one site and find all of the websites that a teacher has referred to lately. This made me think back to my recent PS2 practicum and how many times I had to keep writing the same websites on the board over and over again. We had a class website with student exemplars that the kids wanted to show their parents so I always had to keep writing that one on the board. We also had this really fun bridge building game that kids had a hard time remembering the title for and so I always had to help them find it on Google. I also remember the difficulties of trying to make a list of kid-safe research sites available as a document that the kids could access and click through themselves on the student server. All of these examples are things that could’ve been so much more efficient if these websites had just been available to them on an online list that they could access anytime – hence, the beauty of a website like Diigo.
Not only would it be great for teachers to have these links with their students, but also for kids to share great resources and to use as a collaboration tool as well! I started imagining how kids could have a place to post additional information about a topic we talked about today. For example, if kids were curious about how lightening works, I could tell them to research it in their spare time, and they could highlight facts that they found to the class Diigo so that we could look at it as a class when we have a spare minute. Or if kids were doing a collaborative project on the same topic in a Diigo group, they could highlight facts that they found and that way they could compare results side-by-side on their group page to see what sources were the most credible or useful. This technology does create lots of possibilities for gathering good data, and I like that you can add sticky-notes (annotations) as well because that gives the teacher the chance to pin in a quick side comment, a clarification, or a question on that topic.
I also read an interesting article called “37 Ways Teachers Can Use Pinterest in the Classroom” that talked about some good ways to use Pinterest – another form of social bookmarking to enhance a classroom as well. Although it raised some really interesting ideas, I know that if I start talking about Pinterest now I will never finish this post because it is my favorite website in the whole world! On the topic of good websites, this week we also submitted an email entry to the class explaining what the 3 most important features of a website are, what some good web authoring tools are, and 3 reasons why a website of our choice (I obviously chose Pinterest) is an effective website. Check out my response to these questions in the “Effective Websites” button below!