Social Bookmarking and Annotating


zSocial Bookmarking and Annotating

 

The driving force behind the Web 2.0 revolution is a spirit of intellectual philanthropy and collective intelligence that is made possible by new technologies for communication, collaboration and information management.  One of the best examples of collective intelligence in action are the wide range of social bookmarking applications that have been embraced in recent years.

 


 

 

Social Bookmarking Overview

 

Designed as information management tools that allow users to categorize web finds through the use of tags---keywords that allow for easy searching and grouping of content---social bookmarking applications take advantage of the wisdom of millions of users to identify resources worth exploring.  In their simplest form, social bookmarking applications allow users to organize their own personal bookmarks in an online forum accessible from any computer connected to the internet.  In and of itself, that's pretty handy.  How many times have you wished that you could get to your favorites list when you were sitting at someone else's computer?  With social bookmarking applications, you can.

 

When users make their bookmarks and tag collections public, however, their favorite resources become instantly available---and searchable---to anyone who cares to look.  That means that if you find someone whose thinking stimulates yours, you can "see" what it is that is leaving them jazzed on any given day.  Chances are, that material is likely to be of interest to you as well, right?  Essentially, users of social bookmarking applic are helping one another to "sift through" the volumes of content available online.  Rather than Googling a topic, social bookmarking users can narrow their focus by exploring the links that others they admire or respect are bookmarking.

 

For example, I'm always highly motivated by Will Richardson.  After all, he's doing some remarkable thinking around the innovative ways that technology can be used in the classroom.  Wouldn't it be cool to share his online reading list?

 

Well, you can....and I do!  It's available right here at Delicious, one of the web's most popular social bookmarking applications.  If you use a feed reader like Pageflakes to keep track of the blogs that you like to follow (Here's mine), you can even add someone else's Delicious account to your feed and instantly track the content that they are bookmarking each day.

 

Now here's the real kicker:  For each item that you bookmark, social bookmarking applications like Delicious will provide you with a direct link to all of the other users who bookmarked that the same item.  Take a look at this image, showing an entry in my Delicious account:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you notice the "saved by 31 other people" text highlighted in pink?  Perhaps most importantly, knowing that 31 other people found this article to be valuable provides a measure of assurance that what I'm about to explore is a somewhat valuable resource.  This is simply the principle of collective intelligence in action:  The more times a site is reviewed and deemed credible enough to add to an individual's personal collection of online bookmarks, the more likely it is to be a reliable source of information.   

 

What's more, that link will take me to the Delicious accounts of other users who found this same article interesting.  Most of them are users that I'm sure I won't know---after all, thousands of people use social bookmarking applications like Delicious every single day.  But one thing that all 31 of us share in common is an interest in this particular article on recording Skype interviews.

 

How can that be valuable to consumers of web-based information?

 

It's an instant "starting point" for researching.  I know that I share a common interest with the 31 other users who bookmarked this particular article:  We are all researching ways to best record conversations that we have through Skype.  The chances are good that someone in that list of 31 people has found even more information about our shared interest.   

 

So why not spend some time poking around their Delicious accounts! 

 

By doing so, I'll be able to benefit from the time that they've spent winnowing down the available resources on our shared topic of interest.  The effort that they've invested in searching the Web will be time that I don't have to spend---and the effort that I've invested is time that they don't have to spend.  By sharing our resources, we're making one another collectively smarter...and we're saving one another time. 

 

And we don't even know one another!   Amazing, huh?

 

 

Social Bookmarking and Teamwork

 

 In his book Here Comes Everybody, which focuses on the complex changes that digital tools have had on the work of groups, Clay Shirky's describes in approachable terms the changes that teams go through in their work together. Group activities, Shirky explains, often scaffold upon one another, starting simply and becoming more complex over time.  In his thinking, the three levels of group interactions are sharing, cooperation and collective action.  Each of these levels can be supported by digital tools.

 

For anyone that has ever worked with new learning teams, Shirky's levels feel right.  Rarely do teams jump into complicated tasks that require deep collaboration from day one.  Lacking shared experiences with one another---and the trust that those experiences generate---teams tend to focus on simple tasks that are focused on meeting the immediate demands of the classroom.

 

Often, those early tasks involve the sharing of resources.  Teachers create digital copies of handouts or presentations that address elements of the required curriculum and pass them along to their peers.  They also identify websites that can be used in instruction or preparation.   Articles are gathered, assessments are written, and  videos are identified. 

 

While these early interactions are simplistic processes that by themselves aren't enough to drive meaningful change in teaching and learning, they are essential because they provide team members with low risk opportunities to interact with one another around the topics, materials and instructional practices that should form the foundation of classroom learning experiences.

 

What's more, resource sharing will play a permanent role for most learning teams---even as they move beyond the novice conversations described above.  Highly accomplished teachers and teams are constantly wrestling with and reviewing their practices----which by default means that highly accomplished teams and teachers will always be identifying and generating new materials for use with students.

 

The challenge, then, lies in managing the flood of potential resources.  With limited time, how can teams sift through materials, select those that are of value, and communicate new discoveries with their peers? 

 

That's where social bookmarking applications like Diigo and Delicious come in!

 

As mentioned earlier, social bookmarking applications allows users to add tags to the sites that they find.  Tags are short titles that are generated by users to define the category that they believe best describes a particular weblink.  Once tagged, the resource labeled is grouped with every other resource that has been tagged with the same label---and is available to any other user poking through the "Delicious Library" or the Diigo Library by tag.

 

So if you found this website interesting, you might tag it "PLCs" because it describes the work of professional learning teams, "Tech" because it describes how to use digital tools or "social_bookmarking" because it describes how to use popular social bookmarking services. Better yet, you might tag it with all three phrases----making it easier to find for users interested in any of those three topics! 

 

Once a group of teachers or students have created free Delicious or Diigo accounts and download the appropriate browser buttons to their computers, they can instantly begin bookmarking and tagging websites that are related to the topics that they are studying together. In order to make following one another's tags easy, though, it is helpful to decide on a common "tagging language."  A tagging language is nothing more than a set of categories that all members of a group agree to use when bookmarking websites for shared projects.

 

For a group of teachers working in language arts classrooms, common shared resources might include sites connected to reading, writing, problem solution essays, evaluation essays and poetry resources.  For social studies teachers, shared resources might include sites connected to topics of study like Greece, Rome, World Wars, Middle Ages, Europe, South America and current events.

 

Common tags, then, could include the name of their school, followed by their grade level, content area, and topic of study.  Here's an example of the tagging language that my professional learning community has developed:   

 

salem6la_reading

salem6la_writing

salem6la_ps

salem6la_eval

salem6la_poetry

salem6ss_rome

salem6ss_greece

salem6ss_ce

 

While social bookmarking can be intimidating to teachers new to digital tools, it really isn't!  Bookmarking a site in an application like Diigo or Delicious is no different than adding it to your favorites in any web browser.  The only difference is that groups working together add a predetermined, specific tag to each site that they bookmark.  By doing so, the social bookmarking application automatically sorts sites and allows users to easily see any other resource bookmarked with the same tag.

 

For teams working together, shared tagging language can be nothing short of remarkable.  In Shirky's terms, teams that embrace social bookmarking decrease the "cost" of  group transactions.  No longer do members resist sharing because it's too time consuming or difficult to be valuable. Instead, with a little bit of thought and careful planning, groups can make sharing resources---a key process that all learning teams have to learn to manage---remarkably easy and instant.

 

If you're interested, here's a handout that I used to introduce the process of tagging to my professional learning team:

Download_Salem_Tagging_Overview

 

 

Shared Annotations Overview

 

Few would argue that the fundamental nature of reading is changing as we sprint towards a digital future, and many believe that the changes aren't good.  Traditional knowledge contained in books is overlooked in favor of easy to access online sources.  Filters in the form of professional writers, editors and publishers that once provided assurance that information accessed had been vetted for accuracy have been replaced by open and unchecked sources created by amatuers and experts alike.  Biased and inaccurate reporting stand side-by-side with reliable information, requiring a new sense of media savvy and sophistication on the part of content consumers. 

 

For Nicholas Carr, however, the changes run even deeper, altering the way that his brain tackles text.  "Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy," he writes in Is Google Making Us Stupid,  "My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

 

Carr goes on to argue that reading online---the most prominent form of reading for many---has devolved into nothing more than "power browsing," a horizontal trip through text characterized by skimming in search of content that is immediately engaging and accessible.  Concentration is irrelevant to the online reader, as new pathways are only a quick click away.  "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words," writes Carr, "Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." 

 

Author Steven Johnson has similar concerns about the impact that digital text will have on the commitment and concentration of readers, which he detailed in a column for the Wall Street Journal titled How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write.  "Because they have been largely walled off from the world of hypertext, print books have remained a kind of game preserve for the endangered species of linear, deep focus reading," he writes.  "Online, you can click happily from blog post to email thread to online New Yorker article---sampling, commenting and forwarding as you go.  But when you sit down with an old-fashioned book in your hand, the medium works naturally against such distractions;  it compels you to follow the thread, to stay engaged with a single narrative or argument."

 

But for Johnson, digital text has an untapped potential to create conversations between once isolated readers when paired with electronic tools that make publishing and social networking easy for everyone:

 

"With books becoming part of this [digital] universe, "booklogs" will prosper, with readers taking inspiring or infuriating passages out of books and commenting on them in public.  Google will begin indexing and ranking individual pages and paragraphs from books based on the online chatter about them...You'll read a puzzling passage from a novel and then instantly browse through dozens of comments from readers around the world, annotating, explaining or debating the passage's true meaning.

 

 

Think of it as a permanent, global book club.  As you read, you will know that at any given moment, a conversation is available about the paragraph or even sentence you are reading.  Nobody will read alone anymore.  Reading books will go from being a fundamentally private activity---a direct exchange between author and reader---to a community event, with every isolated paragraph the launching pad for a conversation with strangers around the world."

 

Imagine the collective power of an army of readers engaged in ongoing conversation about provocative ideas, challenging one another's thought, publicly debating, and polishing personal beliefs.  Imagine the cultural understandings that could develop between readers from opposite sides of the earth sharing thought together.  Imagine the potential for brainstorming global solutions, for holding government agencies accountable, or for gathering feedback from disparate stakeholder groups when reading moves from a "fundamentally private activity" to a "community event."

 

That is an inspiring vision of what could be, isn't it? 

 

And it is a vision that Diigo---a popular social bookmarking application and personal research tool---makes possible today.  After creating a free account and installing a simple toolbar to their internet browser, users can add highlights and annotations to any web-based text that are visible directly on the original document and after signing in to Diigo. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diigo makes collective reading possible in a number of different ways.  The default setting for all highlights and annotations is "Public," meaning that anyone with a Diigo account can see the content and comments of other users.  Public highlighting and annotating embraces the purest form of global collaboration, bringing thinkers together randomly and exposing readers to a constant stream of commentary around any text that they choose to explore. 

 

Understanding that there are times when users want their shared reading experiences to be more focused, however, Diigo makes it possible to keep highlights and annotations private or available to members of predetermined and self-selected groups.  For professional learning teams exploring instructional practices or for student research groups exploring content for classroom projects, this provides a measure of targeted exploration between likeminded thinkers.

 

Diigo users can also follow the annotations being added by group members directly from their Diigo homepages instead of visiting a shared article directly.  This feature becomes valuable when the content of the conversation around an article becomes more interesting to a reader than the article itself or when a reader is only interested in one or two key points made by the article's author.  Many users also find it easier to spot and respond to new comments or interesting ideas added to a developing conversation by scanning the expanded annotations from their Diigo homepage.

 

 

 

Finally, Diigo takes the idea of collective exploration of content one step further by providing groups with the opportunity to create shared discussion forums.  Similar to the kinds of conversations hosted on services like Ning and Blackboard, Diigo's "group forums" are threaded, allowing users to start new strands or to reply to strands started by others.  Individual posts also link back to the contributing member's personal Diigo profile, creating new opportunities for personal and professional connections. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Will Richardson, the kind of shared annotations made possible by Diigo add real value to the reading experience and will change the way that our students interact with text.  "Is social reading and social writing in our kids’s futures?" he asks in a 2009 blog entry titled New Reading, New Writing.  "I don’t think there is much doubt about that. More and more I’m finding Diigo annotations and notes cropping up on the articles and essays that I read, and by and large I’ve found the commentors to be serious, thoughtful and articulate....Those of us who are mucking around in these new reading and writing spaces have no formal training in it, obviously, just a passion to connect and a willingness to experiment and engage in conversations around the the topics that interest us."

 

 

 

Shared Bookmarking Roles

 

While Web 2.0 tools promote organic interactions where users come together informally, drawn by their own personal interests and commitments to ideas and conversations, introducing digital participation to K-12 students requires structure and organization.  21st Century students often feel comfortable with the idea of electronic communities while struggling to find ways to build shared knowledge together.  Efficient learning, therefore, is an impossible outcome no matter how powerful a tool's individual potential. 

 

To help students make the most of social bookmarking applications as a group research tool, consider introducing the following six roles:

 

The Original Thinker:  Any group of students working together with social bookmarking applications depends on having a healthy collection of weblinks worth exploring.  The Original Thinker's role in a social bookmarking group is to bring content to the collective table by searching for websites connected to the current topic of study.  While volume matters---Original Thinkers should plan to bookmark upwards of 20 sites for each research thread in order to ensure a measure of reliability in the information stream that a group studies---quality of content counts, too.  Original Thinkers are essentially information filters for their partners.  Careful selections now can help groups to make quick work of shared assignments later. 

 

The Reliability Cop:  While online resources have definitely made researching easier for student groups, they have also made researching riskier. That’s because anyone can write anything that they want online, whether it is true or not. Bogus websites filled with information that you just can’t trust can be found in any set of search results that your group is plowing your way through. That’s where the Reliability Cop comes in. The Reliability Cop must know everything that there is to know about sniffing out websites that just can’t be trusted and they must be willing to review every website that your social bookmarking group spotlights as worthy of continued study. When they find sites that are “fishy,” it is your Reliability Cop’s job to delete them from your shared collection.

 

The Connector:  During the course of any research project, new strands of thought are going to naturally arise.  The group studying Woodstock is going to want to learn more about acoustics.  The group studying the Vietnam War is going to want to learn more about Cambodia.  The group studying prime numbers is going to want to learn more about Euclid and Ancient Greece.  The Connector's role in a social bookmarking group is to be on the constant lookout for links related to these kinds of secondary themes.  Without Connectors, social bookmarking groups will struggle to build the kinds of background knowledge necessary for understanding their primary topics. 

 

Johnny Opposite:  Collections of weblinks built with social bookmarking tools are inherently inclined to bias.  After all, individual users make personal choices about the overall value of a site before adding it to a group's growing resources.  When tackling controversial topics, this can result in one-sided studies.  The deeply religious student will select different information to spotlight about natural selection and adaptation than the student whose parents are university biology professors.  The conservative student will select different information to spotlight about the 2009 presidential election than the student who recently joined the High School Democrats of America.  Johnny Opposite's role in a social bookmarking group is to make sure that personal biases don't taint the quality of a set of links by intentionally searching for sites that represent alternative viewpoints on any hot-button issue that a group is trying to explore. 

 

The Mind Reader:  One of the most valuable sources for finding new articles in social bookmarking applications are the libraries of links automatically generated by popular services like Diigo and Delicious.  Generally organized by tag, these libraries (which Diigo calls Bookmark Lists and which Delicious calls Popular Tags) sort every tag used by every user, creating a catalog of resources that groups can use when studying nearly any topic.  The Mind Reader's role in a social bookmarking group is to poke through these tag libraries looking for sites that may be valuable.  Researching global warming?  The Mind Reader should check out the sites tagged by other Delicious users.  Learning about the Civil War?  The Mind Reader should sift through the sites tagged by other Diigo users.  Essentially, the Mind Reader is looking into the collective brain of other users of social bookmarking services to tap into materials that their group may have missed. 

 

The Cleaning Crew:  Social bookmarking efforts often collapse for one reason:  Group members get lazy and fail to add short descriptions of the content found in bookmarked links or to follow any kind of shared tagging language.  The result:  Haphazard collections of hundreds of seemingly random weblinks that are no easier to explore than simple Google searches.  That's where members of the Cleaning Crew come in.  Understanding the important role that accurate titles, clean descriptions and common tags play in efficient learning, the Cleaning Crew is constantly reviewing the bookmarks added to a shared collection and polishing incomplete entries. 

 

This handout--including a description of each role and a group sign-up sheet---can be used with student social bookmarking efforts:

Handout_SocialBookmarkingRoles.pdf

 

 

Shared Annotation Roles

 

Many of today's teachers make a critical mistake when introducing digital tools by assuming that armed with a username and a password, students will automatically find meaningful ways to learn together.  The results can be disastrous.  Motivation wanes when groups using new services fail to meet reasonable standards of performance.  "Why did I bother to plug my students in for this project?" teachers wonder.  "They could have done better work with a piece of paper and a pencil!"

 

Avoiding this all-too-common pitfall requires understanding the kinds of skills that students must master in order to make the best use of digital applications.  With shared annotation services like Diigo, powerful learning depends on much more than understanding the technical details behind adding highlights and comments for other members of a group to see.  Instead, powerful learning depends on the quality of the conversation that develops around the content being studied together.  That means teachers must systematically introduce students to a set of collaborative dialogue behaviors that can be easily implemented online.

 

Consider introducing the following shared annotation roles to your students before they begin using Diigo for reading together.  Doing so will ensure that shared annotation experiences result in the kinds of high-level thinking that you expect:

 

Captain Cannonball:  Good conversations only begin with participants who are willing and able to find interesting ideas to talk about.  That is Captain Cannonball's role in a shared annotation group.  With a critical eye and an understanding of a group's interests and responsibilities, Captain Cannonball should find four or five key points in a shared reading to highlight and craft initial questions for other readers to consider.  Captain Cannonball's choices are important.  The success of a shared reading often depends on the quality of the first comments and questions added. 

 

The Provocateur:  Think about the best conversations that you've ever been involved in.  They've always included a bit of passion, didn't they?  Disagreements are really nothing more than evidence of deep thinking, as participants work to defend, explain, revise or refine their personal beliefs.  Sadly, these opportunities for learning are few and far between in many conversations because everyone "plays nice," not wanting to "make waves" or to "rock the boat."  The Provocateur's role in a shared annotation group is to stir things up a bit, challenging the thinking of peers in the conversation.  Directly responding to comments made by others, the Provocateur works to remind everyone that there are two sides to every story.  

 

The Middle Man:  Just as important to successful conversations are participants who are skilled at finding the common ground between different positions.  Pointing out the overlap between two seemingly contradictory positions helps all members of a group to remain connected to one another and can help to highlight areas for continued study.  The Middle Man's role in a shared annotation group is to carefully consider the different viewpoints being shared in a conversation looking for connections.  Middle Men are often the glue that holds contentious conversations together. 

 

The Author's Worst Nightmare:  Shared annotation tools like Diigo allow groups to do something that was once unheard of:  With a few digital clicks, users can challenge statements and ideas made by any author.  No longer are readers required to simply accept that authors are experts who have the final word on topics being studied.  Instead, readers can publicly push back at the assertions and ideas of authors---and that's the role of the Author's Worst Nighmare in a shared annotation group.  Bringing a healthy dose of skepticism to the conversation, the Author's Worst Nightmare looks to question statements made and conclusions drawn throughout a shared reading.  While groups may eventually decide that an author's assertions are spot-on, the Author's Worst Nightmare's responsibility is to make sure that every point is put through the fires of shared reflection.  

 

The Repo Man:  Shared conversations are only successful if groups walk away with a collection of shared ideas that can be used in future work.  That's where the Repo Man comes in.  The Repo Man's role in a shared annotation group is to carefully monitor conversations, looking for summary points that define exactly what it is that a group learned together during the course of a collective reading.  While the Repo Man's real work begins as a conversation is ending, he or she must stay "in tune" with the thoughts and ideas being shared as a conversation develops in order to identify important "takeaways" that a group can learn from.  

 

 

 

Sample Strand of Student Annotations

 

One of the most helpful steps that teachers can take when preparing students for shared annotation experiences is to provide samples of the kinds of deep thinking that can happen when students use shared annotation services in a thoughtful and productive manner.  Spotlighting the characteristics of quality conversations provides students with exemplars that they can use as models for their own participation.  

 

The following conversation broke out between a group of sixth grade students who were studying the role that US corporations play in polluting Peru.  Notice that students work together, challenging each others' thinking, asking one another questions, and responding to the thoughts of their peers.  Also notice that student entries are, for the most part, grammatically correct and characterized by standard English. 

 

These are the kinds of standard behaviors that you can develop in your own students with systematic efforts to teach the skills connected to collaborative conversations:

 

 

Text Highlight:  US-owned Doe Run Corporation bought the smelter from the state in 1997 on the condition that it would reduce toxic emissions.

 

 

 

 

Absolutly not! We have enough money already. As one of the wealthier countries in the world, we don't have the right to 'bully' the underdeveloped countries. We should be helping them not hurting them. If we want to make world peace, helping underdeveloped countries is a good start. The poor countries tend to fight more because they are in major need of money, natural resources, land, or something other than that. We also don't want the poor Peruvians to get mad at us.On the flip side, we are in an economic crisis. Do you think that the people leading the business need money or want to provide jobs. I still don't think that matters as much as helping out other countries. What do you think about this situation? comment by Anna E

 

 

 

That's an interesting and powerful choice of words, Anna---"bully." I wonder if everyone in our class would agree with you that the actions of US companies like the one running the Doe Run smelter equal bullying. How do you think the company would respond to your accusation? What would their point of view be? Mr. F comment by William Ferriter

 

 

 

This is interesting to me, Caroline....In one place, you mention that you think the US is responsible for harming children and in the next, you say that's okay because the Peruvian government is allowing us to do so. Are you still wrestling with your opinion on this article? It seems like you're arguing that people are only responsible for their poor decisions when other people get mad about it. Is that what you're saying?Mr. F comment by William Ferriter

 

 

But in a way, the Peruvian government is also at fault. They needed money, so we placed our factory there to provide them with jobs. These jobs give the Peruvian people working at the factory a shelter, food to feed to their families, and money. If the Peruvian government thought that the health of the residents were more important than the jobs that they gain, they would’ve turned our offer down. But instead, they accepted.

 

So, I don’t really know who’s right or wrong. What do you guys think? Do you think that the US is at fault for knowing what would happen and still placing our factory in Peru, or that the Peruvian government is wrong for accepting the offer and neglecting to think about the resident’s of La Oroya’s health? comment by Caroline W

 

 

I think the US is more at fault then the Peruvian government. Peru only said yes to the offer because it would give the people jobs and help out there country. The US knew what the smelters would do to the people and the environment and they still went ahead and offerred the "deal." We probably knew that Peru would accept the offer because there economy is really weak. Also, the US may not have told Peru what the effects of the smelters were. Since the US only cared about the money, they could have not told them the whole truth so they would knnow that they secured the smelter in Peru.If you were the US company, would you have told Peru the whole truth and risking putting the smelter in Peru? comment by Kristen W

 

 

Handouts

The following handouts can be used by teachers working to structure social bookmarking and shared annotation efforts in their classrooms.  

 

 

Checklist for Student Bookmarking Groups

Checklist_StudentBookmarkingGroups.pdf

 

One of the best ways for student research groups to begin collecting and organizing information on the topic that they are studying in class is to use a social bookmarking tool called Diigo (http://www.diigo.com). After teachers create student accounts for everyone in their class and introduce students to the basics of Diigo, groups can use the following checklist to organize the work of their group.

 

 

Diigo Social Bookmarking Directions for Teachers

Handout_DiigoDirectionsTeachers.pdf

 

Of all the social bookmarking sites available online, Diigo has become the most "teacher-friendly" option, allowing educators to create private, safe student user accounts and study groups.  This set of directions will help teachers to get their classes started with Diigo as a social bookmarking tool. 

 

 

Diigo Social Bookmarking Directions for Students

Handout_DiigoDirectionsStudent.pdf

 

Once teachers have created user accounts and student groups for their classes, it is time to turn students loose!  This handout details common Diigo directions for students, covering topics ranging from adding a new bookmark to sorting through growing collections assembled by student research groups. 

 

 

Diigo Shared Annotation Directions for Teachers

Handout_DiigoSharedAnnotationDirectionsTEACH.pdf

 

Diigo—a tool that many researchers use for social bookmarking—has another powerful feature: With Diigo (http://www.diigo.com), members of student research groups can add highlights and annotations to an article that they are studying together. Once teachers have set up student research groups, created student accounts, and shown classes how to add bookmarks to shared Diigo collections, conversations around content are literally one-click away. This set of directions can help teachers to structure successful shared annotation efforts in Diigo.

 

 

Technical Directions for Adding Diigo Annotations

Handout_DiigoAnnotationsTechnicalDirectionsSTUDENT.pdf

 

This handout details the steps involved in adding highlights and annotations to shared readings in Diigo.  It is intended for student use and written with that audience in mind. 

 

 

 

Reflecting on Diigo Annotations

Handout_ReflectingonDiigoAnnotations.pdf

 

One of the keys to really taking advantage of Diigo (http://www.diigo.com) as a student research tool is learning to make quality contributions to the conversations that your peers are having around articles. Use this handout—which includes a strand of conversation between a group of sixth grade students—to reflect on the characteristics of quality annotations and Diigo conversations.

 

 

Shared Annotation Roles Handout

Handout_SharedAnnotationRoles.pdf

 

One of the keys to structuring shared annotation efforts between students is providing students with a set of clear roles to fill as members of their annotation group.  This handout includes a list of potential roles for shared annotation efforts, provides a set of questions for reflecting about the value of each of the annotation roles described, and offers a system for tracking group assignments. 

 

 

Scoring Shared Annotation Efforts

Handout_ScoringSharedAnnotationEfforts.pdf

 

Improving shared annotation efforts requires regularly reviewing the content that groups are creating together. Students and teachers alike can use this rubric to judge the quality of the work done around any shared reading.