I realize that I need to be up to speed on technology, and in many cases, I'm not too bad with it. However, social bookmarking threw me for a loop. I understand the concept, mostly, but comparing the various social bookmarking sites actually confused me more and made me doubt any understanding I had. While I appreciate the offer to call Louis when we are struggling, I didn't call him for this because I fear I would have had him on the phone all day today, and I still would have unanswered questions that I probably don't even know I have yet. I will give it a good faith effort to try using Diigo, mostly because I do get annoyed that I save something as a favorite on one computer, but then it is not saved on another computer; therefore, social bookmarking would be wonderful for this. I will need to be hands-on with this new-to-me technology before I can truly decide if it is a worthy headache. I will first try sharing my bookmarks with colleagues for the purpose of collaboration before trying to use it with students so that I am assured that I know the features and how to best use it. Once I get to a point of comfort and confidence and am ready to go live with students, I plan to use it for research purposes with my Multicultural Literature class. I may begin by simply assigning them to create a social bookmark for a particular culture, or I may ask them to visit my bookmarks and synthesize the information from them. It will take a leap of faith on my part!
Regarding browsers, this is a matter of me stepping outside of my comfort zone, too. I am so familiar with Internet Explorer that I have never really tried anything else. Conducting research on the other four browsers, though, has made me think that maybe all the little annoyances that I get with Internet Explorer do not have to be; I could try another browser, and the problems could disappear. I know that some of my students' browser of choice is Mozilla Firefox, with which I am only slightly familiar, but they seem to have success with it, especially when Internet Explorer fails. I think I need to be at least basic to proficient with each of the "major" browsers so that when my students use them I can work with them. Yet another task to master. When will this get easy for me???
Jamie~
ReplyDeleteIt makes me feel like I am not so far out of it to hear that this is new to you as well. I too found it confusing to go through all the different social bookmarks and to be honest, when I started to investigate I had no clue what I was looking at. After a few bookmarking tutuorials and practice I finally have an understanding of how to use them and how they will ease up time when saving my favorites. I too have favorites all over the place on different computers so it would be nice to have it all in one spot.
I really like your idea of bookmarking information for your students and then having them look at all you have gathered. I know you mentioned it and I agree that as we become more proficient ourselves we can then challenge our students to create individual or group bookmarking pages as well!
Kristi