Diigo – The Site to “Annote, Archive, Organize”

Posted on by
Reply

What is Diigo?

Diigo stands for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff.” It is a social bookmarking program that allows you to save your ‘favorites’ online, so that they can be accessible from any computer with an internet connection. However, Diigo does much more than this.

As you read on the web, as well as bookmarking websites, you can also highlight parts of web pages that are of particular interest to you. Or, you can attach sticky notes to specific parts of web pages. These highlights and sticky notes are persistent – whenever you return to the original web page, you will see your highlights and sticky notes superimposed on the original page, just what you would expect if you highlighted or wrote on a book!

The ‘social’ part of the bookmarking program is also very useful. With every Diigo user tagging and annotating pages online, the Diigo community has collectively created a wonderful repository of quality content, filtered and annotated by the community, on almost any subject you may be interested in.

For example, if you would like to find popular resources on e-learning, searching Diigo can probably get what you want in less time than using search engines, and you may also gain insights from other users.

 

For me, it is a great way to organize my bookmarks for resources that provides me accessibility anywhere.  On my iPad, my Android phone, and any computer that I have access to.

It also has allowed me to share resources with teachers from all over.  In a few weeks, my students will begin reading a book with classes from Mississippi and North Carolina.  The two teachers and I have been able to share our various resources through Diigo.

 

 

 

Watch this video to learn more about the numerous possibilities of using Diigo:

Diigo V5: Collect and Highlight, Then Remember! from diigobuzz on Vimeo.

To find out more information, visit 12 Reasons Teachers should use Diigo from where this information has been cross posted.

Try Diigo out, and let me know what you think!

Class Dojo – A Classroom Management System

Posted on by
Reply

 

I am a firm believer that in order for students to be successful, they must have a classroom environment that has structure and discipline – in addition to a firm curriculum base. I have tried many different strategies to document student behaviors – a clipboard checklist and a behavior flipchart to name a few, but they have never had all of the components that I desired – a way for students to have a visible reminder of classroom expectations and a non-cluttered, hassle free way to track the data.

While on Twitter one night, I found a tweet about ClassDojo. ClassDojo is an online program that allows you to provide immediate feedback for student behavior (positive and negative). It enables you to easily award and record points, achievements and rewards for behavior and performance in class in real-time, with just one click of your smartphone or laptop.

 

 

ClassDojo provides instant visual notifications for your students (‘Well done Josh! +1 for teamwork!’) in addition to allowing you to keep the feedback over a period of time. It also allows you to decide what you behaviors your find important and award points that way.

 

Since my laptop is continuously hooked to my projector and Promethean board, students can immediately see their progress.

In addition, ClassDojo  allows you to create reports for yourself, parents, and even your administration.  I love it, because it allows me to acknowledge/reward desired behaviors (and I make a BIG deal out of it) and identify students who may sometimes fly under the radar.

 

 

I have found that positive behaviors have increased, and negative behaviors have decreased since I began using ClassDojo.  Students are aware of the behaviors that will cause them to earn points – so they make sure that they have those components; and in turn they have stopped doing those things that will cause them to lose points.

If you have an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or an Android smart phone, you can update the behaviors from your device and it will show up on the computer.  Try ClassDojo and leave me a comment on how it works for you.

 

Animoto

Posted on by
1

Animoto was founded to help people better share their stories and express themselves through online media by innovating technologies in the field of video production.  What does this mean for us?  Teachers and students can create videos to share their findings on any subject – for free!

Animoto gives teachers a free plus account, as well as a passcode for 6-month plus account for up to 50 students!  How can I use this is my classroom, you ask?  This year, my students will create a digital book-talk for a book they have read.  Below is a sample book-talk that I created for the novel Miracle’s Boys.

 

 

Interested in Animoto?  Click this link to sign up.

Using Edmodo In the Classroom

Posted on by
Reply

Edmodo is like a safe, protected, Facebook for classrooms! I found it a year ago and immediately signed up. Actually using it has been more of a challenge. We will begin reading a novel in January and I plan to use Edmodo as a way to extend the learning through various writing activities.  Below is a video of how you can use Edmodo in an ELA classroom.

There are also links for other subjects on the Edmodo website.  Click here to try it out.  Already a member?  Find me – mrsjeff2u.

Welcome!

Posted on by
Reply

Welcome to my professional blog.  I’ve been contemplating creating a place where educators can find tech resources and hopefully this will be one that is beneficial to many.  It is my goal to create screencasts that will guide you through detailed tutorials of various technology tools.  I hope that you find this information useful.

Feel free to contact me for any questions you may have about any of the tools you see here.