When I taught fourth grade, one of my favorite activities to do when teaching reading was to make use of sticky notes. (We are talking about the days when integrating technology was making use of the four to five desktop computers in the back of the classroom.) Whatever reading strategy we were using or story/text element we were discussing was marked in the students' books with sticky notes. If it was a copy of an article that was shared with the class, we would bust out the highlighters and write all over it to share our thinking. Now there's Diigo.
Diigo has actually been around since 2006. So we are not talking about anything new. However, one thing that has greatly changed is the access to it. In the Chrome Web Store, there is a Diigo Web Collector that allows you to quickly launch the service. Users can then highlight and post sticky-notes on any website. What is also really incredible is the ability to share a link to a users annotated page so that others can view your annotations. Also, there is a lot more to it than what I'm covering. This is just a quick overview of how to get started and take advantage of the basic features.
Diigo Installation
If installing a Chrome extension is something you are already familiar with, then you can skip this part. More than likely, you just want a quick link to the Chrome Web Store so that you don't even have to go searching for it...like this one.
Annotate a Website
Want to get started annotating. Here's how it is done! It is simple to highlight and add sticky notes to a page. You can even use various colors to help categorize and organize your thoughts. The great part is, your Diigo annotations are automatically saved. So even if you close out of Chrome, all marks will be saved in your account's "My Library".
Share Your Annotations
What is especially cool is the ability to share your annotated links. This is really powerful for a teacher to highlight and leave sticky-notes all over an online article and then share it with his/her students. This would be great if you were modeling a reading/comprehension strategy and shared your link to the students through a QR Code, Google Classroom, or other learning management system. Teachers could even record the lesson using Screencastify so that students could revisit the reading strategy when necessary. Students could also share their annotated inks with the teacher. Either way, sharing is the most powerful part of Diigo.
Organizing Annotated Links
If you start using Diigo for the purpose of research, tagging your links will help you sort through all your Diigo annotated links. This video covers how to find your library of links as well as tag them so that they can be better organized.
If you happen to try Diigo and want to share some cool annotated links with me, or have a blogpost/website with your kids using it, drop them/it in the comments below this post. I'd love to hear from you.
Sounds fun! I want to try it.
ReplyDeleteAlways loved sticky notes.