The Classroom » Reviews

Using Diigo for Organizing the Web for your Class

Mr. G — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:46:38 +0000

A good friend of mine, Randy Lyseng, has been telling people of the tremendous power and educational value that can be gained from social bookmarking in the classroom. His personal favourite is Diigo.

My preference is a social bookmarking tool called http://diigo.com. With diigo, you can highlight, add stick notes and make your comments private or public. (Randy Lyseng, Lyseng Tech: Social Bookmarking, November 2006)

After listening to Randy praise Diigo at every opportunity, I finally started playing with the site (and corresponding program, more on that in a bit) this summer (I know Randy – I’m slow to catch on…)As I started to play with the system, my mind started reeling with all the possibilities. First off, like any other social bookmarking tool, Diigo allows you to put all your favorites/bookmarks in one “central” location. Students can access them from ANY computer in the world (talk about the new WWW: whatever, whenever, where ever). They just open up your Diigo page, and there are all the links. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Diigo’s power lies in it’s group annotations. That’s right, people can now write in the margins of webpages. You can highlight passages of interest, write notes, and even write a blog entry directly from another webpage, quoting passages right from the original text. Sounds great – but to do all that it must be complicated right?

Nope. To use these advanced features all you need to do is run the Diigo software. This can either be done using a bookmarklet or by downloading and installing the Diigo toolbar. While both have basically the same features, the toobar is less finicky, and allows you to use contextual menus to access features quickly. I also find the toolbar’s highlighting and sticky notes to be easier to read. Ok fine… I can leave notes on webpages – so what?

Here’s an example. I’m thinking about having my 7B’s record radio plays. I’ve looked them up online and found many scripts from all the old classics available. However many also contain the old endorsements from tobacco and other companies. So I go to a play that I’d like to my students to record and highlight the old commercial. If they’re using diigo when they access this page they’ll see the same text highlighted in pink, and when they mouse over the highlighted text they’ll get a hidden message from me – “I’d like you to write a new advertisement for this section. What other advertisement do you think we could write for here? Write an ad for a virtue or trait that you think is important. For example – “Here’s a news flash for every person in Canada. It’s about a sensational, new kind of personality that will make you the envy of all those around you. It’s call trustworthiness. Why with just a pinch of this great product….” They now have a writing assignment to go along with the recording of the radio play.

Adding assignments is just one possibility. You can ask questions about the site, or have students carry on conversations about the text. Perhaps about the validity of some information. These notes can be made private (for your eyes only), public, or for a select group of people. You could use the same webpage for multiple classes, and have a different set of sticky notes for each one! Diigo will also create a separate webpage for each group you create, helping you organize your bookmarks/notes further! This technology is useful for any class, but I think is a must have for any group trying to organize something along the lines of the 1 to 1 project. I’m hoping to convince all the core teachers to set up a group page for their classes, and organize their book marks there! I’ve already started one for my 7B Language Arts Class!

One of the first questions I was asked when I started looking at this site, and more importantly at the bookmarklets and toolbar was is it secure? Will it bring spyware onto our systems? How about stability? I’ve currently been running the Diigo bookmarklet and toolbar on 3 different browsers, Explorer, Firefox, and Safari (sorry, there’s no Safari toolbar yet), across 4 different computers and 2 different platforms with no problems. I’ve also run every virus and spyware scan I can think of, everything checks out clean. I’ve also done an extensive internet check, and can’t find any major problems reported by anyone else. To my mind it’s an absolutely fantastic tool for use in the classroom. Thanks Diigo! And thanks Randy for pointing me in the right direction!

Scholastic Keys

Mr. G — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:51:57 +0000

Rating: A
Have you ever tried to teach children in grades K-3 Mircosoft Word? Not just keyboarding or story writing, but actually have them use Word. To do so you need the patiatice of a saint, and a BIG bottle of aspirin on hand. You could use other programs like storybook weaver and kids works to teach basic word processing skills, but this can lead to other problems:

If you don’t have the same program on your computer you can’t view the file.
Many homes don’t have these programs so the child can continue to practice newly learned skills.
They will eventually need to learn MS Word.

Well the folks at eWord in Australia came up with a solution. A suite of programs then called “Max’s Sandbox” added a “kid friendly” interface to the three most popular Office Programs – Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. This was then upgraded to “Max’s Toolbox” which Scholastic purchased the North American distribution rights and Scholastic Keys was born!

Regardless of what name you call it (because I’m Canadian I’ll stick with the Scholastic Keys moniker) this fantastic program contains 3 parts:

Max Write (Word)
Max Show (PowerPoint)
Max Count (Excel)

You also get Max Paint and Max Recorder that allows children to create their own pictures (either freehand or with templates and stamps) and to record their own audio track.

With Max Show I have seen Grade One students create simple PowerPoint presentations that were printed off to create predictable books for them to read with our Kindergarten class. With Max Write Grade Two students have written longer stories then they did on paper, inserting appropriate graphics as they went (a skill some teachers have yet to master). These students were able to do their basic word processing and keyboarding skills, while learning the basic interface of one of the most used (and complex) suite of programs around.

The “key” to the success of Scholastic Keys is in the limitations they put on the features offered. Extras like the contextual menu, hyperlinks, even the highlighter and format painter are removed (and how often did you REALLY use them anyway?) The old standbys of cut, paste, save, and print remain – but the icons are larger and easier to identify. One MAJOR oversight that was missed in Sandbox, but remedied in Keys is the spell check feature. But large icons and fewer choices are not the only way Scholastic Keys makes Office simple for the little ones to use.

One of the hardest things for Division One students is file management, especially over a network (the F drive takes on a whole new meaning for Grade One teachers). Scholastic Keys remedies this by not giving students a choice. Once a specific folder has been set (this can be tricky… but I’ll get to that later) Keys creates three folders in which it stores all it’s files – One for each program: Max Write, Max Show, and Max Count. When a student goes to open a file, they don’t just read the file name, but get to see a “thumbnail” (a small picture) of their first page, so they can recognize it visually as well. These features make file management for little ones a breeze.

Setting up that file management however is not something for the beginner to do. Scholastic Keys is defaulted to place the three folders into the My Documents folder. Great! Unless you have 200 students using that same My Documents folder. Depending on how your computer lab is set up, this may not pose a problem. However if it does, it’s not the easiest thing for the lay person to change. Don’t get me wrong, it can be done, and anyone with a reasonable knowledge of networks can do it in 30 seconds flat, but I highly suggest that everyone else leaves it to the techies.

That said Scholastic Keys is one of the greatest new programs that has come across my desk in a long time. While the first day or two can prove to be a challenge for the really young ones, they learn extremely fast, and really enjoy the experience. The programs are easy to use, and seeing as the students are REALLY using the Office Suite, create files that 95% of computers can read and use. And when they go home they can still point out to Mommy and Daddy the save, cut, paste, and even insert clip art icons, and continue practicing at home (with out having to buy new programs). I whole-heartedly give Scholastic Keys an A, and recommend it for all elementary schools.

Pros:
Easy interface for Div I students
Actually uses Office Programs
Max Paint allows kids to extend their creativity
Unlimited educational opportunities
Cons:
Can be a bit tricky for young kids at first.
Set up in a network environment can be a slight challenge in certian situations.
No Mac version.