My classmate (and awesome sister-in-law) Ann (visit her blog here) shared a video on how to use some of the more detailed features of Diigo. Up to this point, I've been using it merely to tag sites or save them to read later. Watching the video made me want to try out the highlighting, inserting shapes, and screen capturing features which are actually really easy to use...for the most part. I had some difficulty figuring out how to save what I was doing; for some reason, the save icon was not working for me, so I'm going to continue playing around with that.
While I will most likely not have my students create Diigo accounts, having a classroom account would be useful for times when I want my students to visit particular pages. Instead of having them type in the frequently rather cumbersome URLs, I can have them visit the Diigo page and click on the link there. I could make folders that the students could access with appropriate websites that were relevant to what we were doing as a class. This seems like a great elementary use for Diigo since I know from experience that giving kids a URL to type in usually turns out fairly unsuccessful for about half the class.
I haven't created a class Diigo yet, but I already know it's going to have great application in my room. I'm almost wondering if it would be better to just create a grade level one so that my teaching partners and I could add links and share them with each other as well. Until then, you can check out my Diigo library (which is still in its beginning stages).
I know it's not traditional to be the first to comment on your own blog, but I had to share that it's driving me NUTS that every time I open my blog, the Diigo video starts playing!!
ReplyDeleteHahahaha!! It is making me crazy too! Thank you for linking my blog, but what else should I expect from a likewise awesome sister-in-law? ;) I think it is a great idea to create a grade level Diigo. Your entire team should be able to pool all sorts of resources for you and your students. Combined efforts for efficacy are always helpful.
ReplyDeleteAlso, take a look at Symbaloo http://www.symbaloo.com/ and LiveBinders, which I think you already have looked at.
ReplyDeleteThe List feature will work well. You can click on a List, and then use that URL to give your students, or post a hyperlink to it on a class blog or website and all the students would need to do is click on the ink to find the sites you want them to use for a project. There are other tools that can do the same, but since you have a Diigo account where you are bookmarking resources, you can go that route. LiveBinders is another option to explore in the future.
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