Social Bookmarking

http://diigo.com/user/motherbear2012

Popular social bookmarking sites are Delicious.com and Diigo.com. These sites are developed to help users manage information overload mentioned in a previous post. The idea is to save a link and annotate them with a tag, similar to tagging a photo in Flickr . This keeps them organized and you can also share them. Pages can also be highlighted. I always saved a web site that I liked and would want to use again in My Favourites; however, I can only access these pages from the computer that I saved it on. The difference with using Delicious and Diigo is that I can access the sites from any computer; also, it is organized by topic and collaborative in nature.

Teachers can set up a list of web pages that their students can use for a research projects. For example, I recently gave my English 9 students a list of questions and terms to help focus their research about Shakespeare and the Elizabethan era. Also, students were required to develop three questions of their own having to do with their topic. This is where Diigo.com would come into play. The students would access the web sites I saved; in addition, they could access web sites that other educators had saved about the same topic.

I created a Diigo account. It seems that the great benefit of Diigo is that one can bookmark a page, highlight some particular part of the text which you can put in the description, and create sticky notes. As well, you click on recommended tags. For example, I typed in Learning Commons, ended up searching in Google and bookmarked a page by David Loerscher and Carolyn Koechlin (whom I have met). Pages may be sent to a group or one can create a group. Diigo is most beneficial when people save and share. Teachers can get their students to focus on certain web sites--the annotated links and sticky note features can help the students understand the information they are reading. I think Diigo is a great resource and I cannot wait to bookmark my favourite sites and more importantly share them. I am motherbear2012 by the way!

http://delicious.com/donna_vandijk


I also tried delicious. It seems very easy to use. I had to sign on using my Facebook account. A person could also sign in using their Twitter account. Wow! Fantastic! Do not go to delicious, unless you have a lot of time. I bookmarked a few pages that I intend on returning to at a later date. I typed in Inquiry-based learning, then Web 2.0 tools. I found so many resources; I bookmarked the pages with the most hits, as I think they must be the most popular. Delicious looks like a great bookmarking site for personal interests, such as hobbies, recipes, photography, etc. that can be shared with family and friends or other enthusiasts with the same interests. I can also see this site as great for sharing web pages with students or having students save their favourite web sites on a particular topic.

Discussion - Information Overload

I definitely agree with the statement in the “Information Overload” article in Wikipedia (2012) that “[e]-mail remains a major source of information overload.” I tend to delete emails that look like businesses or advertisements to reduce the amount of emails in my in box. As most of the people mentioned in the class, I just do not have the time to read every single email that comes into my email box. I have started to put emails in folders; however, I cannot see that I will get much time to come back to them. I save confidential and important emails that I may need to come back to, or that I need a record for, such as parent emails. I save URLs in my Favourites if I like the content and I will probably return to these websites at a future date. Because I am not in the library this year, I unsubscribed to the LMNETSERV as I definitely do not have time to read. Also, I unsubscribed to the provincial teacher-librarian listservs for the same reason. I still get emails from many companies that I subscribed to for ordering purposes for the library; however, I do not want to set up those accounts again if I get into the library again next year or so. I change the colour of emails if I must return to them in the near future; once I deal with them, I change the colour back to black. While emails are a source of information overload, they are also a positive form of communication that I readily take advantage. For example, emails help to communicate with other teachers and parents almost instantly. Marks can be sent from Easy Grade Pro keeping the line of communication open with parents (I learned how to do this at a work shop Oct.19th). This is much quicker than using the telephone. Although emails are mostly time-consuming, they also help manage information in an effective manner.

Another reason for information overload is “a rapidly increasing rate of new information being produced” (Wikipedia, 2010). Any question that I want answered can be Googled. How amazing is that? I cannot get over the overwhelming vastness of the amount of information at the tips of my fingers. This also creates problems as one must double-check the accuracy of some information, but it is still faster than it was in the good old days of books and encyclopedias. When it comes to teaching, the internet has made finding an abundance of assignments on the internet that can be tweaked; however, this abundance of information also makes it easy for students to plagiarize assignments—you know—the cut and paste mish mash method of completing assignments. However, the internet also makes it possible for students to communicate with other classrooms from around the world; though, I have not reached this point yet, and I am not sure where to start. Furthermore, I am anticipating with my English 12 class that I will not have the volume of assignments to carry home this semester, as they are using a BLOG for their Independent Novel study, adding to the volume of information being produced. What a great organizational tool.

Moreover, the internet is a huge storage device, but somehow I worry that a site will cease to exist and I will lose everything. Changing schools has taught me that everything that one saves in their H-drive does not come with them to the new school, so I lost seven years of work. In the case of pictures, I am afraid that a site, such as Flickr or Picasso will disappear and my pictures with it. This creates a need for everything to be backed up to portable hard-drives or flash drives. I suppose that is a lot better than the several binders and boxes of English material that I have stored in a bedroom and the basement taking up valuable space. On the other hand, these photo sharing sites are amazing in that it allows families to share pictures with one another almost instantly. I have the wonderful opportunity of viewing and watching my grandchildren grow throughout the years, as my son does not live in the same city as I do. In the past, I made copies of picture and stored them on a CD categorized by years. They are stored in a shoebox in the cupboard. That is scary as I think of it now, especially as pictures are priceless.

Since I started this course, LIBE477B, I have created many accounts with different user names and passwords, so because I cannot use the same password or username for every single account, I have had to make a Word document to keep track. This will help me keep organized and also once this course is finished, I will still be able to access these places. I do not know how many times I have started a project and haven’t returned to it because I cannot remember how to get back there or remember the passwords.

As a couple of people in the class mentioned, I also do not have a Smart phone yet. I am not sure if I want the expense. I still have the old flip phone. It works for what little I use it for—texting to help my daughter save money on her phone bill when she goes to Vancouver. I received a Sony e-reader for Christmas, but I still prefer to read the hard copy of a book. Some people in the class mentioned that they still use the paper calendar. I use a planner to keep myself organized. I have to admit that I did not write down every due date for assignments for this course down for the first time since I started university (1999) and I am really feeling like I am getting behind. It is probably because it is my tenth course. Many people have mentioned Delicious. I think I checked into it once during a different course, but I am not sure how it works or what it is. I suppose that is coming up in a future lesson. I feel that I must spend or am forced to spend so much time on the computer, and I really miss having the time to go out for a walk. In conclusion, I have to say that I am not as organized as I should be and that life is not balanced. While computers make life so much easier, they are also very time-consuming.

YouTube and Teacher Tube

http://www.youtube.com/

You Tube is a great video sharing site! As well, You Tube is a powerful video sharing site as the Amanda Todd video can attest. After the announcement of her death, there were almost 2 million views and still counting in a very short period of time. This particular video has a very heart-wrenching message that brought many people around the world together in order to address the bullying issue and support many students who are experiencing the same pain as Amanda Todd. Police and government officials will also work toward a solution as a result of this case. This one case demonstrates the power of just one video.

Many people view You tube videos for a lot of reasons. A popular reason is for music. One can view a video and listen to just about any song; additionally, one can get the lyrics. These music videos could be used for poetry units in English. Many people view videos to learn how to do a task; if one wants to know how to do just about anything, it is posted on YouTube.

One downfall about using You Tube is that it uses a lot of the available bandwidth. This is a problem in schools. In addition, You tube videos do not always focus on educational videos. The teacher may come across inappropriate content inadvertently; furthermore, there are a lot of advertisements. Students must be educated about what to do when they come across offensive material. In order to avoid these downfalls, there is a video sharing site for teachers.

teachertube.com/

Teacher Tube has educational videos for sharing. Videos are reviewed and designed to meet learning objectives. Teacher Tube is great for avoiding inappropriate material and advertisements. It is great to know that there is an alternative video sharing site other than You Tube. It takes some planning time to make a good video.

I tried MovieMaker. At first, I felt very frustrated, but somehow I came out with a short, but simple video, which I posted in my Technology Autobiography below. I played around with pictures I downloaded from Google Images, bought a song from itunes, added some text, and ran some credits. Although very simple, I was proud of my handiwork. Next, I want to try to make a movie using the titles of books and discussing them for book talks for English and later on, the library.

I also see the potential for having students act out a major scene in a novel. I know my English 12 students are preparing interviews (interviewing Death for The Book Thief); preparing a talk show; and other creative projects for their novel studies. I am looking forward to viewing them along with the class. Videos are a powerful learning tool, especially when more and more of our students are visual learners.

I watched a couple of versions of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream in my English 9 class today. My students said that it really helped them understand what they had just read. The students appreciated having a visual to go along with the text. We read Acts I and II as a class; then, I showed them the BBC Animated version of Midsummer Night's Dream. I also showed them a Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck Disney version. They liked the BBC Animated version better as they felt that it explained the play in more detail than the Disney version. We will read more of the play and then I will show Part 2, read the rest of the play and watch Part 3. The students seemed much more engaged in the play. I noticed that the students recognized their part that they had read and actually finished the lines. They did not seem to have any difficulty filling out their Response booklets after viewing the videos.

My Communications 11 class is writing different types of letters. I checked out You Tube EDU for a regular Business Letter. One video explained and demonstrated the Business Letter line by line. There were many videos explaining the various types of letters. As I mentioned above, there are instructions about how to do just about anything on these video web sites.