[Grade 9] Using Diigo for bookmarking websites? It’s a must!

 

My Grade 9 students use Chrome and today we made sure that each one of them has the Chrome bookmarklet on his/her browser bar. Since we use Chrome we added the Chrome extension called Diigo web. Learning proper bookmarking skills is an essential skill for everyone in my opinion. 

My discussion with the class
What do you do when you find a good article on the Internet and you want to keep a record of it it later use? The best way is to ‘bookmark’ it quickly and simply. Bookmarking is an online process. So the question becomes ‘How do you bookmark sites when you are surfing the Internet?’ 

There are so many superb ways to do this ‘bookmarking’ but one of my favourite bookmarking sites is Diigo (http://diigo.com) because of all the amazing options that it offers.  A really great thing about using Diigo to bookmark a site is that once you have bookmarked it (and it takes about one or two seconds to do this), it will be available on all the devices that you use simply because it is done online.

How to use Diigo
As soon as you click on the little blue Diigo icon a window opens and from there you stay simple and simply 'save' and give it a name or category when the save button opens up;  or you can go further and use some of the useful options such as seen on the image on the right..

I found a really good YouTube Diigo video tutorial on 'How to use Diigo' by David Knapp (6 minutes in length) and I have embedded it below.  It elaborates really well on the following:

• how to sign up for Diigo.com
• how to create tags to categorize the websites you save so you can easily search for it later i.e. Science, Maths, reading etc
• how to add the Diigo bookmarklet to your browser menu bar for easy capturing
• how to add your bookmark to a list
• how to also save your bookmark to a ‘group’
• how to add a Diigo extension to Chrome for easy bookmarking
• how to annotate  a website while you are reading it
• how to add a sticky note to a website
• how to easily navigate to the sites you have saved
• how to share lists with others

Take a look at the tutorial  here:



Classroom use for Diigo
Diigo is a useful tool to introduce to your students if you are a teacher. Apart from simply saving a website they find online they can study the content online using the various options of annotating, highlighting, creating sticky notes etc.

Watch how this second grade teacher uses Diigo with her class! The video is called ‘Diigo how to homework for 2nd grade’.




There’s so much more you can do with this amazing bookmarking site – but this is a good beginning. Really, you must give this site a try. Whatever device you use, knowing how to bookmark using Diigo is a must for productive Internet surfing!

Further reading PLN Challenge #7: Using Diigo as part of your PLN

Get your students thinking critically and interpreting datasets with TuvaLabs – have you tried using it?

Have you seen this Data Literacy Skills site called TuvaLabs https://www.tuvalabs.com? It really is worth exploring. I thought I would give it a quick review in this blogpost.  

TuvaLabs is a site that contains all kinds of data from 'reliable' sources, and the goal at TuvaLabs is to help students develop their data literacy skills, enable them to be critical thinkers and persistent problem solvers, and empower them to become active members in their own communities and global citizens of the world.

As I opened TavaLabs Beta, knowing nothing about it, it looked quite interesting ‘Data Literacy skills for a brighter future. Empower your students to think critically about data, ask meaningful questions and communicate their observations and questions.’ Isn't that something we need and want for our students?

Navigating the site 
One of the co-founders of the site is Harshil Parikh and I must say that after I joined and enrolled a class he has been excellent with follow up emails and offers of help with getting started. The design is kept very simple – the menu bar only has three options (Find resources, Explore datasets, Ask) and one has to scroll down and pick up other little bits of information.

What is on the site?
The site contains interesting data sets with some ways of interpreting them using graphs, activities, and a place to ask questions

a) Types of activities: Challenge and project
b) Grades: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12
c) Topics: Community, social, energy, entertainment, global

Hashil sends data update emails constantly informing us of new data sets. The following are screenshots of  lead-ins of new data sets:

An alarming recent data set

Tuvalabs recently added a dataset which had some alarming statistics ‘The Dark side of Chocolate’ noting the sad use of child labour in this industry. 

Contributors to the site

a) Dataset contributors

b) A community of teachers who share activities, lessons and projects they've created for exploring, analysing, and visualizing datasets around topics they are covering in the classroom. These resources can fit into the classroom at any level, from 15 minute sessions all the way up to month long projects.

Finding resources on the site
There is a well set out, simple diagram showing the process with finding resources and a link to an introductory video. Users can:

a) Choose datasets related to one's curriculum topics or catering to student interests

b) Find an activity or create one's own around the dataset and assign it to one's class

c) Evaluate one's students' work and provide feedback on their datablogs

• At my last count there were 71 datasets in four subjects - Science, Social Studies, Global Studies, Health. All are attractively set out with an appealing draw card image.
• There were 86 activities created by teachers – some public and some private. (I recognise some names. Some have written quite a few activities.)

The resources are beautifully set out visually. I took a look at the one that says ‘The rise of mobile phones in South Africa’ On the page that opens out there is a short introduction and three headings – Raw data (in this case provided by the World Bank), Activities (none yet) and New Activity (for someone to add) With the raw data there are nine options for creating different types of graphs. One has to sign in for anything further.

Joining up

I joined up. You have to join a class. I joined a Grade 8 class for Science and will let them explore this term. (Once you are in the site you are taken to some resources for 8th Grade Science. ) I immediately received an informative email from Hashil.  

Opinion

I rather like this site. Interpreting data is a very important skill in this day and age. I’ll definitely pursue it with a class. I also like the idea of teacher-contributed activities and data sets from relevant sources. Those are not easy to find.  Communities of Practice provide great opportunities for learning.

[Grade 3] Using PowerPoint to teach an activity on adjectives

Earlier this term, whilst researching on the Internet, I came across two posts on adjectives that fascinated me. The first was a post in a Grade 3 blog showing two photos of an activity on Adjectives  http://goo.gl/2BtmFo (see one of the photos below). The second post was a video on the use of adjectives in descriptive writing found at http://goo.gl/OmZ77H  This gave me the idea of doing something similar to both of these posts with a Grade 3 class and including technology.  The students enjoyed the activity so much that I decided to write a blog post about it.

Step 1: Create a template for the students to use
I figured this could be created on two A4-size pieces of paper joined together with a piece cut out for the head. I created the template for the students and it can be accessed here.



Step 2: Explore adjectives with the class and how they can be used in descriptive writing
The next step was to talk about the importance of adjectives in writing.  We revised the meaning of adjectives. I read the class a very plain paragraph that had no descriptive words and asked them to draw a quick picture using a drawing programme they were familiar with (in this class Paint). All the pictures were different. Then I read the same paragraph but this time with lovely descriptive adjectives and asked them to draw the picture. This time the pictures were very similar because the adjectives had led a much clearer image being imagined.
Download the adjectives template as a PDF

Step 3: Brainstorm positive adjectives that can be used to describe other students in the class. 
We now had a brainstorming session on adjectives that could describe others in the class. The instruction was that the class should use only positive words but that no names should be mentioned.  As the students called out words I typed them out and displayed them on the screen via the data projector. These were left on the screen as prompts for words during the remainder of the activity.

Step 4: The students think of 20 adjectives to describe themselves and fill them in on the provided template
Since the school I volunteer at uses Windows computers we used PowerPoint for this lesson. However Keynote on an iPad or a Google Presentation on an Android tablet would have done the trick as well.

Step 5: The templates are completed and printed
As far as technology skills are concerned this was a good way of working creatively with font types, font size, colour and font position. As far as using adjectives is concerned the students enjoyed thinking of positive words about themselves.

Step 6: Print the templates, cut out the head space, glue the two pages together and draw hair using regular crayons
Here is a photo of some of the final results of this activity.

Step 7: Create a description of oneself using the selected adjectives
In the next lesson this part of the lesson will be tackled.

The wonderful e-book creator app, Book Creator, is now available on Android!

There was so much excitement on Twitter yesterday! Why? One of my favourite writing apps on the iPad is BookCreator and there were many tweets yesterday announcing that this app is now available for Android! The Book Creator blog made this exciting statement yesterday about the product,  ‘With over 4 million books made on the iPad with Book Creator, we’re very excited that from today anyone with an Android tablet can create, share and publish their own beautiful ebooks.’

What can you do with Book Creator on Android?

• Add pictures from the Gallery, grab them from the web, or snap from the camera. Then move and resize them with your fingers.
• Edit text using the onscreen keyboard, and apply rich formatting to make it look great.
• Narrate your books and bring them to life.
• Record and import video.
• Layout your book exactly as you want with guidelines and snap positioning.
• Preview your books with the built in reading mode.
• Upload to Google Play Books for reading across all your devices.
• Collaborate on book creation with the simple import and export to Google Drive.
• Send your books to your friends over email.
• Become a published author – export your books as fully standard ePub 3 files ready for submission to Google Play and Apple’s iBooks Store.

Introductory video
This short video shows Book Creator in action:




A showcase of books made with Book Creator on Pinterest
This board entitled ‘Made in Book Creator’ shows a few of the lovely titles that have been created using Book Creator http://goo.gl/rzbKoa 

Book Creator on Facebook
Book Creator also has a Facebook page with many ideas on it  https://www.facebook.com/bookcreator

Further reading
The Internet is full of lovely blogposts about how Book Creator has been used in a classroom

• Creating and publishing a collaborative ebook: librarian Karin Hallett takes us through the step-by-step process her students went through to create history ebooks.
• Book Creator for the iPad: Book Creator - the simple way to create beautiful e-books on the iPad. This video shows you how to create an e-book from scratch and read it in iBooks in just a minute and a half.
• Book Creator adding to the learning experience in South Africa It is humbling to realise the impact that Book Creator has in schools around the world. This story comes from a librarian in South Africa.
• Kids Teaching Kids with Book Creator: One kindergarten class teaches another kindergarten class how to use Book Creator
• How to Use Book Creator on iPad: A snapguide tutorial
• 4 compelling ideas for using Book Creator in the classroom: Technology Coach Chris Loat shares his ideas on how Book Creator can be used effectively in the classroom.
• Book Creator helps 8-year-old new to English:Teacher Emma McCluskey tells the story of how an iPad with Book Creator helped a student to create a book 6 months after arriving in her classroom with no English.

Book Creator for Android costs R25 which could be a big expense in a South African classroom  but it really is worth getting to grips with this app.