Diigo+in+the+Classroom

=Diigo in the Classroom=

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. Today's 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.

Student "Gardening" Roles
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.

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.