Monday, October 14, 2013

Organizing The Digital Learning Environment

“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up.”
--A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

With instant access to so much information online, organizing your digital learning environment can be quite a challenge!  As we explore creating digital learning environments for our learners, we need to keep organization in mind as well. There are tons of online productivity tools to help keep you, your learners, and digital information organized.  Evernote, Google Drive, Edmodo, Symbaloo, and Diigo are among some of the most popular ways to organize and save digital information.  


Diigo (Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff) is one of our very favorite tools. It is a web tool that allows you to save, annotate, and share any information from the internet.  


Watch this video to see how the iTeam is using Diigo to organize our digital learning environment!





Top 3 reasons we love Diigo:
  • Collaboration - Each iTeam member is part of the iTeam Resources group, so we can all add content any time.
  • Tagging - Any resource we add to the group can have multiple tags, so we don’t have to decide on a single way to organize.
  • Access - We can access Diigo from any internet enabled device any time, so when we find a great resource to share we can add it to the resource list instantly! This makes it easy for us to add resources to our list and share them with you.

Ideas for using Diigo with learners:
  • Guided Research - Choose a tag for an upcoming research project.  Collect resources in your Diigo account for the project and tag them with the tag you chose. Visit your Diigo library and click the tag for the project.  Share this website address with your learners via your website or QR code.
  • Classroom Resource List - Save sites you would like learners to visit.  Organize your list with tags your learners will understand.  Link your resource list to your website.
  • Keep Track of Project Resources - Learners with Diigo accounts can keep track of all of the resources they use for a project.  
  • Offer Product Choices - Create a list of sites for learner to use to create products.

You can learn more about Diigo here: http://www.diigo.com/about

You can visit the iTeam Diigo Resource list here
https://sites.google.com/a/g.coppellisd.com/cisditeam/resources


What is your favorite tool to organize your own digital learning?  Why?  

What is your favorite tool to organize digital learning environments for your learners? Why?

26 comments:

  1. I use weblist.me for my GTi kids. I like the cute design of it for them, and I can include youtube videos, game links, documents, old PowerPoint (ah hem... Google Presentations), together in one link for the kids to use. I started using weblist.me because we do so much research-based work in my classes, that as a momma, it's important for me to preview all the content, including random adds on the side. Once I've checked everything, I want them to only access that "acceptable" information. However, I am aware that this may be a disservice as they mature, because they're not sure how to make Google search work to its fullest potential. Weblist me also has an arrow feature so the kids can click to the next resource, or they use the drop down feature to quickly site their source. As for me, I don't organize anything... I've have used Diigo for collecting research article type of stuff, and love the highligher feature to call attention to facts I want to use later, but mainly I'm still using the Grandmama bookmark tool on my computer. (you kid get off my lawn!)

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    1. It is great that you preview content and create a guided research list. That is a wonderful idea, especially for young learners. Unfiltered Google searching may not be appropriate for young learners. I do think we need to teach our learners how to search and evaluate their results. I wonder if you might use our databases in Destiny to help them learn to search for information and evaluate the information they find? Young learners can even learn some search skills within a website you've chosen (PebbleGo, Discovery Kids, A-Z-Animals, etc).

      You could learn to love Diigo like I do and stop using that browser based bookmarking tool (not just for Grandmamas). But really, you should use what works for you!

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  2. In past years, I've used www.protopage.com and I have a menu of bookmarks for each content area that I need for students to refer to. It's my website, where everything is in one place. I'm in the process of familiarizing myself with Edmodo currently and I like the features that are available. This is a fun learning experience.

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    1. I just checked out Protopage.com. What a neat tool! I can see some great ways to use that to organize some things for myself. Thank you for sharing!

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  3. Just this weekend on Twitter I read about www.educlipper.net, www.symbaloo.com, www.scoop.it, and coincidentally....Diigo! I need a place to better organize my online learning and haven't committed to one yet. I'm motivated, after watching your video! Educlipper seemed very user and teacher friendly.

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    1. Finding a tool that works the way your mind works is the first (and hardest) step! There are so many great tools for educators out there - love that you are using your Twitter PLN to get recommendations. The best tool of course is the one that works best for you!! Thank you for sharing some other options with this blog. Can't wait to hear what you decide!

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  4. Even found this super blog post about MANY ways to organize your digital learning http://suewaters.com/2013/10/13/digital-curation/

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    1. Thank you for sharing! Great blog post! We will be doing a Twitter chat on curation October 23rd! We hope you'll join us!

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  5. Over the past several years, I have been using Edmodo to organize my digital collections. However, this blog has made me realize that I need to expand my digital learning organization tools. I look forward to a better organizational structure.

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    1. Edmodo can be a great "one stop shop" for our learners, but we are also glad to hear that this blog is helping you to see some other ways to organize are out there for when you need them in conjunction with Edmodo. To learn more options, check out our Webinar this Wednesday at 6pm (we will be archiving it if you cannot make the live show) or join us for our Twitter chat on Oct. 23rd - it is all about curation!

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  6. I have created Edmodo sites for the two departments I oversee, but after watching the above clip, I am going to shift to Diigo. Diigo offers so much more!! Thank you for sharing this!

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    1. I think that Diigo would be a great resource to share with our departments/teams and PLC's (at any level, k-12) so that they could have all shared resources for each content area in one place - we can even "tag" the things we have in Google Docs and make it part of the Diigo! Great idea, Kayla!

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  7. I have been wanting to use symbaloo but I feel Diigo has more options. I love that you can tag it with multiple words so as your diigo library grows you have more options to search through your resources. I also really like how you used a widget to embed the word cloud. Very neat way to use word cloud! Thanks for sharing this information! Exciting!

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    1. I think Symbaloo is a great organizational tool. Visual learners (and educators) seem to love that one because it is so pleasing to the eyes. I think that's why a lot of people really love Pinterest too! As Alli said (above), it's important to find the tool that works best for you!

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  8. I have just started using Diigo this year to help me keep track of all the great lesson ideas I stumble across on the internet. I am trying to get in a habit of using it more often, but I do have a good list going so far. I love the idea of using Diigo to provide a list of resources for my students. I have never thought about sharing it out to the learners before! I've always used it for the links I want to keep track of, as a teacher! Thanks for the great ideas.

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    1. Great Maddie! I would love to come by and see how you are using this. I am excited to learn more about it.

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    2. If you end up using Diigo with your learners, we'd love to hear about it and possibly post it as an example in the future! :-)

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  9. A couple of years ago I began "collecting" cool ideas that I saw happening in classrooms and literacy resources that I wanted to save. I put them on Edmodo and shared them with teachers. After watching Diigo, I'd really like to transfer my collections. I love the tag feature because I wouldn't have to scroll and hunt for a video or lesson. I definitely see the importance of organization as our world becomes increasingly digital! Great video! Thanks iTeam!

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    1. Tagging has really helped me stay organized, since I can never remember where I file things. Did it go under Social Studies or Maps? With tags, I don't have to decide! That's why it is just the perfect tool for me. I agree with Alli (above) that we need to shop around and try different tools to find the one that will work best for us.

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  10. One of our iwest teachers, Shari Zoda, uses Pearltrees. It is a social library that lets you collect organize and share. We have been considering having our students create pearltrees for themselves but diigo is a much better idea. I am going to share diigo with our Blended Learning team. We could create a common diigo for all our learners to search from. This is good information!! Thank you!

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    1. I'm so glad we were able to share a tool that will help the educators and learners of iWest! After you give it a try, we hope you will share with us!

      I've never even heard of Pearltrees.... pardon me while I go check it out and add it to my personal Diigo list. :-) Thanks for sharing!

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  11. I noticed this week our Diigo cloud on the iTeam website isn't working properly. When you click a tag, it is showing a "no results" page for some reason. Our apologies to any of you that have tried to use it! I've reached out to Diigo support to see if we can resolve the issue. Until then, you can still search by keyword on our Diigo group page. To do so, just click the first link in the "Related Searches" box on the right side of the no results page.

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    1. Our group tag cloud seems to be back up and running! It was just a temporary bug on the Diigo site.

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  12. I've been using Edmodo, and really like it, though I just started using weblist.me as well. I have tried Diigo in the past and need to get back to it. I need to be exposing my learners to a larger variety of tools in order to help them develop their ability to organize the digital learning environment. We can work on it together!

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    1. I love the idea of working on exposing your learners to a variety of tools and working together to evaluate which ones they feel are right for their learning styles and needs. Sometimes that can release us educators from feeling like we have to be the experts about every tool! I have had learners propose tools to me that I haven't even heard of which is awesome too!

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  13. Juggling all digital resources was a challenge for the 1st year of teaching (this is my 3rd year). There are so many good resources to help supplement or flip my biology class. For my students, I have used iTunes U to keep all documents organized and at 100% access for them.

    For the things I've collected in a few years, I've been using learni.st. It's sort of like Pinterest (I wanted my personal pins and school pins to be in separate places). You can see my live boards here if you please :) https://learni.st/users/rhoda.hahn

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