Friday, August 31, 2007

Classroom 2.0, Social Networking, and Diigo

I'm really enjoying being a member of Classroom 2.0, a community set up by Steve Hargadon, an ed tech person, using Ning. This is a community of teachers interested in using technology, and they are from all over the world. When I first signed up, my first friend request came from a teacher in Germany. There are lots of interesting topics being discussed there. I drop in when I have a chance, and read a few posts.

For example, tonight I went to the homepage and looked at the new discussions. Steve started several to get people to talk about what kinds of sites they use and like for various things. I checked in to the social bookmarking discussion, and read a really interesting post by Dave Ehrhart. I thought everyone would be talking about Delicious, but no. Dave is using a site called Diigo with his students. Not only can they bookmark sites, but they can highlight pages that they read and write notes on them. Dave, their high school history teacher, can look at their highlighting and notes and add comments of his own to help direct their inquiry or sharpen their insights.

Dave posted a screencast that explains exactly how he uses this tool with his students. After I watched it I understood Diigo and started thinking about how it could be used with adult education students. So I clicked on Dave's icon and went to his home page, left a comment there, and sent a request to add him as a friend. I want to see what else he has discovered!

That's social networking. Steve Hargadon has also created another community on Ning to help teachers set up and use communities. Today I proposed a workshop for CATESOL on Social Networking for Professional Development. I swore I wasn't going to do more than one workshop next year, but this topic I couldn't resist. I have the privilege of having time to surf around and see what's new, and I see part of my job as sharing what I learn, so there you go. Leave me a comment if you like or use Diigo, of if you have other social bookmarking sites to share.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Marian,

Thanks for sharing this info. The fact you have to download Diigo is problematic, at least for our school computers. However, it got me thinking...

I've posted in my blog about how I have students use online tools called Fleck and Jump Knowledge (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/05/26/fleck-2/) to "annotate" their favorite links on my webpage.

There's absolutely no reason why they couldn't use the same tool on articles they find interesting.

It's an obviously better use of these tools than just focusing on my site.

Thanks again for sharing, and it was great finally meeting you!

Guy Jean said...

I particularly enjoyed Dave Ehrhart's screencast. That was most helpful, as I'm not familiar with Diigo at all. Thanks very much for including it in your informative post.

Larry Ferlazzo said...

Marian,

I've sent a meme your way:

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/09/03/latest-bookmarks/

Larry Ferlazzo said...

Marian,



I'm writing to all the ESL-related blogs that are on my blogroll. I'd like to invite you to consider sending in a post from your blog that has appeared within the past few months, or that you will be writing in September, for inclusion in an ESL "Carnival" that I'm hosting.

A Carnival is basically a collection of posts from various blogs on a selected topic. All you have to do is pick a post you've written sometime over the past few months or one that you will write in September that you think is particularly insightul or helpful and that's related to teaching English Language Learners. Send the link to me by Sept. 30th and I'll post the collection shortly thereafter.

If there's interest, we could continue this monthly or quarterly, each time hosted by a different blog.

Here's a post I've written announcing it:

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/09/06/lets-start-an-esl-carnival/

And here's a link to a recent "Carnival of Education" to give you an idea of what a Carnival might look like:

http://educationwonk.blogspot.com/2007/09/carnival-of-education-week-135.html

Larry Ferlazzo