Of the four technological tools we learned about on Friday, I was most taken with the possibilities of using diigo. As I discovered from Ryan's excellent presentation, one of the most underrated tools on diigo involves caching websites that are likely to change. This seems promising when used in combination with diigo's ability to let one annotate the website with comments.
One popular and useful assignment English teachers give out involves asking students to annotate/take notes on/talk to the text on a specfic piece of fiction or non-fiction and then turn those annotations/notes/texttalks in. The teacher can then assess students' abilities to extract information, gather main ideas, make connections, identify unknown words, and ask relevant questions. I've only seen this done on paper, however.
With diigo, I think I could assign students online articles or fiction and ask them to take notes over the computer. Students could then share with me their annotations through diigo. This seems preferable to uploading and downloading 30 pdfs or adobes, and it also seems easier to navigate than a screenshot, especially if the text is more than one page. Particularly when it comes to preparing students to read at a college level, reading on the computer is an increasingly important skill and diigo potentially provides a tool for us as teachers to assess students' digital reading comprehension strategies.
You make a good point that we could use Diigo to view students' annotations of articles online. I remember having assignments like that in high school, where we would be given a text and have to annotate it using specific guidelines provided by the teacher. I can definitely see the possibility of making these assignments electronic with Diigo. It would be a great way to monitor students' reading comprehension.
ReplyDeleteI too was fascinated by the opportunities present with Diigo. I think it's blazing a trail with a ton of potential to change the way search, keep tabs, and annotate on the web. The way you translated its usefulness to the English classroom is impressive - you've managed to meld it seamlessly and use Diigo as a tool to assess students' reading comprehension. Wow, nice work!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of sharing annotations through diigo--this could be a great way to get students talking about class readings. I also think it's interesting that you mentioned reading on a computer being a skill. I completely agree, as it seems that schools may be using iPads, Kindles, and Nooks more often. Do you think you would do a lesson on how to highlight, annotate, etc. texts online?
ReplyDeleteI had not before thought about being able to diigo this way, but it seems that this would be a way to not only get students to learn more about technology but also to use it in a productive manner. It would also allow you to see student work instantly and to get a sense if the students are on the right track or not. Also, being able to navigate the different resources on the web and use them properly is an important thing for students to begin to learn early on.
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