Organizing Information on the Internet

Amber McCabe and I are colleagues at Brecknock Elementary in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  For this project, we both struggled to find tools on the internet, to help our students organize themselves. At the elementary level, the teacher's website seems to be the "organizer" of information as they are not yet independent enough to sift through the web themselves.  Dr. Brunsell gave us permission to work together on this project because we both had similar thoughts about what programs we could use in the classroom. We will post independently as we will have some ideas that are different, but if you notice similarities to our projects it is because of this.

For this project, I chose the primary focus to be Diigo.  I began using Diigo in the classroom last fall.  I was extremely excited as I thought about where Diigo could take us, as a third grade team within the school and even as a third grade team in the district.  I met with my third grade team, and then subsequently met with the district team of grade three teachers. Everyone seemed excited about the opportunity to share. We downloaded the toolbar together, and I gave them a short tutorial. I thought it seemed like a great way for us to connect and share things with each other that we had found...in essence, we were creating a mini-search engine for our curriculum.  Sounds wonderful, right?  Perhaps people were lurking on the site, but very few posts were made.  Why?  I don't know. I talked to them again at another in-service and it seemed like my colleagues were not finding things worth posting.  Does this mean they were not continually scanning the web for ideas to supplement the curriculum. Yes, I think that's what it does mean. I'm not sure where to go with that. 

Next school year, I will be working with a new team. I have already mentioned the idea to my new colleagues and they seem excited. But will it work? Will we follow through? Or, will we stick with "what we know" and bookmark on our computers?  We shall see. 

So, next year, where do I want to go with Diigo? Next year, I am hoping to use Diigo as a social bookmarking tool for my students, instead of for me as a professional.  I plan to give my students an introduction to social bookmarking, what the benefits are, how to tag, how to categorize, how to annotate notes.  Most importantly, as our book states, I want them to learn how to learn from each other. My hope is that this tool will help us to see the knowledge that we can gain from each person individually, and how great we are as a whole. 

Next year, my students will have access to a "Libell6th" Diigo account. Here they will be able to add to the classes "Library", which they can access from anywhere. They will be part of  a bigger picture, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it works in my classroom. 

On this link, I simply have the new Diigo account, and three resources to start us off!
http://www.diigo.com/user/libell6th