Beyond School

Still the same lesson as yesterday, block schedule. So I got to refine a bit on yesterday’s approach–especially the Diigo slice.

I went too fast yesterday. Luckily, the learners today who raised their hands during the reading/Diigo workshop asked questions teaching me what I needed to clarify. These things:

1. Demonstrate the Diigo “My Bookmarks” homepage. Have students bookmark, highlight, annnotate, and–most importantly, tag, using “triangulating” multiple tags–and save as a two-minute training drill. Really stress the fine art of tag-labeling up front. They see it soon enough.
1. It helped them to see my own bookmarks page–over 1300 links–on the LCD projector, then to picture 1300 articles stuffed in a box without folders, and trying to find one you’re looking for. The analogy of “folder labels in a file drawer” worked for them.
2. Remember to explain that the first action on an un-bookmarked page will always be “bookmark,” and make them see the logic of that–once bookmarked, all new selections will default to “highlight”.
2. Then have them go to their Diigo homepage and click on “My Bookmarks,” and walk them through seeing the site they just bookmarked. Show them
1. Its title
2. Its tags
3. the “expand” and “expand all” buttons
4. the highlighted quotes from the text they bookmarked, once expanded
5. the annotations (”sticky-notes”) they made

The above took about ten minutes. Then they were set. They Diigo’d fine the rest of the class.

No Spivey today–he didn’t have the 9 history class, so back to solo teaching. Less fun (Michael Harvey, where are you?).

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