Denise's posterous

Social Bookmarking - Love at First Sight!

Yes! It was love of at first sight! I am so in love with Diigo!!!! And I just met "him" two days ago!!! I think this feeling of mine reveals how much of an immigrant I am in this e-world!

I used to keep everything I browsed from the internet in folders in my laptop. Now it only takes me a few clicks to have everything organized and labeled in my Diigo. I also love all the sharing that goes with it. If my friends and I share mutual interests, we can benefit from each other's bookmarking. This means Diigo helps increase the amount and speed of information travel... Isn't this great?! Also, with social bookmarking we can feel closer to our friends once we know what they are in at that moment. OMG! THIS MEANS IT IS A POWERFUL SOURCE FOR TEACHERS TO ENGAGE THEIR STUDENTS!!! As I see it, social bookmarking can be a powerful aid to teachers because they can see what their students are bookmarking - and these pieces of information can be used in the classroom for motivation purpose, once we know our students better! Now imagine that I want my students to research about a specific topic... They can share information more easily and I can see what they are bookmarking and even guide them with some suggestions. 

I have one concern (food for thought): How will our brains handle so much information?? What will the results on future generations be?

The difficulty I am still having is that I haven't been able to bookmark PDF pages on the internet...

Up to now, among what has been shared with my Diigo friends, something I have enjoyed very much was a Blog that Erika Oya shared with us about EFL/ESL. It's really rich in terms of information. Thanks, Erika!

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Learning: Engaging and Sharing

These are my reflexions for Week 2 Assignment:

  • How do your students learn? That's a question educators have been discussing since forever. It's now believed that engaging students in the learning process is crucial, i.e., students have to take an active part in the classroom. When students are motivated to participate in their learning, it's more likely that they will be more successful. Moreover, sharing plays an important role in the learning process. Using web tools might be very helpful in both engaging students and providing them with experiences in which they need to share what they are leaning.

  • How much tech-richness does your curriculum provide? We tend to blame the "system" for our not being able to do this or that. However, that's a very comfortable position for us teachers. I think we should not wait or wish for the ideal situations. Much to the contrary, we should take an active position and try to adapt what we have to what we want to do. The curriculum we work with today can't obviously be totally adapted to allowing web explorations, because the people who designed it were not raised in the digital era. We are the generation of teachers in charge of this transition, which means a break from many old paradigms.

  • How are you using the WWW to teach your students? Honestly speaking, I am not using much of it. I need to be more confident. However, I am sure that I have made a lot of progress in this field. I remember how pessimistic I used to be about using the web with my students - I was always afraid that something would go wrong, and I would panic in front of my students... Now I am here eager to learn... and feel more "e-self-confident" (I love using this "e-" before words now!!!!!).

  • How do we turn our 21st century classrooms into learning engines? By engaging our students in the learning process, which means motivating them (which means working with what they like); by  allowing them to show us who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are; by providing them with experiences that require them to produce something with what they are being taught.

  • Are you engaging your students? Well, I try to, but I'm sure that I can engage them even more if I use web tools to motivate them to be active.

  • What are your main barriers to incorporating technology into your classroom? I think I am the biggest barrier because I am not ready yet. That's why I am here! I want to feel secure enough to use technology with my students.