Tutorial: Two Uses of Technology to Improve Literacy and Critical Thinking

Published February 02, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT

Diigo.com

I'm still thinking about that UCLA research saying "technology in the classroom damages literacy and critical thinking." I'm still thinking it's behind the times, in its framing of technology as "video games and TV," and its complete omission of the Web and the social media/Web 2.0 explosion over the last five years or so.

So I ranted - rationally, mind you - against it in the first post. Now I'm going to follow up with a demonstration of two examples showing how blind the UCLA research was to today's possibilities, how behind the times.

The following screencast tutorial should be useful for every reader and thinker who doesn't know about it. Students of all ages, it should rock your world; and teachers, throw a bit of imagination at it and it might transform your practice a bit.

Background:

In the past two+ years, I've read and bookmarked almost 3,500 websites that I wanted to keep. I've also highlighted the interesting passages on them, and written margin-notes about those highlights - all without printing the pages.

I've also put all 3,500 websites in a file cabinet - without printing them out - that I can access anywhere in the world that has an internet connection.

And I've placed each bookmarked site in multiple folders with individual labels, so I can see everything I've saved about, say, NCLB, or Creationism, or the Cold War, or stuff that made me laugh, on one online page.

It's easy, efficient, and turbo-effective literacy, research, and information management. It's unique to the Berners-Lee Age. Gutenberg would have loved it. Some high-profile "researchers" apparently know little of it.

Here's a screencast showing how easily you can do it too (and much more, but one thing at a time), using Diigo. It's made using Screencast-o-matic.com's free online service - which is also valuable for teaching. Think of applications for English Language Learners, special needs students, and visual/aural learners, for example.

If you find this valuable, and want more little tutorials like this, please tell me. It's encouraging to hear.
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Comments (14)

Clay,

Thanks for the mention and a great showcase of Diigo's capabilities.

Cannot agree with you more! Time is indeed changing: with the overwhelming amount of data available online, many innovative technologies allow you to do things way behind what can be done in a traditional setting. Bob Wolf, of The Boston Consulting Group, and a researcher on the use of internet in public education recently commented: “We believe that Web2.0 technologies will define and be defined by the skill requirements of the 21st century workforce. It is time to understand whether models have emerged for using these tools that are superior to traditional classroom teaching alone and what are the best approaches for the practitioner to implement them.”

As a research tool, Diigo allows you to add persistent highlights and sticky notes to any web page, and to organize content by tags, lists and groups. In a sense, Diigo's web annotation technology makes the entire web writable, just like on paper, and much better in many ways!

Prof Mike Wesch, a leading cultural anthropologist / researcher exploring the impact of new media on society and culture, commented:

"Diigo turns reading and research into a social activity. Conversations emerge right on the page and spill over into the classroom. Students love it. They not only engage with the material, they engage with each other."

Among the web 2.0 technologies, Diigo seamlessly integrates all the functions necessary to work with such an increased flow of information and we believe that Diigo provides a unique collaborative research and learning platform that will be valuable in all aspects of information processing, from discovering, digesting, organizing, sharing, collaborating to interacting, which are all essential skills for 21st centuary workforce.

We've recently release the first phase of "Diigo Educator account" www.diigo.com/education We look forward to collaborating with leading educators (like you, Clay :-) to explore the full potential of Diigo as an educational tool. Going forward, we will continue to work with our education community to define the next phase of Diigo for Education.

Posted by Maggie Tsai on 02/02/2009 @ 09:26AM PT
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Hi Clay -
Wow - it would be so cool if I could just get it to work. I have this great plan that my journalism students will annotate, comment on, and share stories on a classroom blog. This was supposed to be "sick" (as one of my seniors called it when I demonstrated how it was supposed to work. Sick. I can't say as I have ever had an on-going assignmment that rated that high.) We've got everyone capable of writing to the blog. We have everyone signed up for Diigo and highlighting. Only half can get the two communicating. A nice young man at diigo tried to help but his fix we had already tried. We will make it work though! Any assignment that rates that high is worth fighting for.
One of my students, who signed in with the lovely username diigosucks has said (sheepishly) that he now uses Diigo a lot for other classes.
So yes!

Posted by Kate Tabor on 02/02/2009 @ 01:39PM PT
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Kate, your snarky student wins my heart - especially for his sheepish confession.

So you have a _group_ of students all trying to do Diigo "blog this" posts to _one_ blog? That sounds tricky. It works for me on my single-poster blog.

You know this, but it's worth pointing out: "Frustration tolerance" of all things tech is already, and will surely continue to be, an important character strength for this tech-filled century. It's the means to that even greater skill, "problem-solving."

I've long made that argument to my students when we faced glitches. "You'll either be the person in the group who freaks out, throws a tantrum, and weighs on everybody else's nerves, OR you'll be the hero who keeps cool and works out the issue while the tantrum-thrower(s) are getting pink slips."

Something like that.

Sick.

Posted by Clay Burell on 02/02/2009 @ 03:53PM PT
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What's curious about the 18 to one "blog this" posting is that it works for half of the kids. I can find no unified field theory here, so I may end up having them all create their own blogs. I was hoping that they could go to one stop for reading and commenting, but I will make that stop their RSS readers. Every day a new adventure.

Posted by Kate Tabor on 02/02/2009 @ 05:55PM PT
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This is amazing! I am also a person with thousands of bookmarked pages and had no way to synthesize and/or cross-reference the content. This will help enormously (!) for the research papers I hope to write someday. Thanks so much for sharing. -Allison (age 26), who spends 3 hours a day reading the internet, not counting email or Facebook

Posted by Allison Chang on 02/02/2009 @ 09:49PM PT
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Thanks for letting me know, Allison, and glad it was helpful.

Posted by Clay Burell on 02/02/2009 @ 10:09PM PT
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And by the way, thanks for adding the testimony to what should be obvious but clearly isn't: the web promotes reading.

Posted by Clay Burell on 02/03/2009 @ 01:27AM PT
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Clay, I am wondering, why did you chose to upload this screencast to YouTube instead of use Screencast-o-matic's own upload and publish feature?

Posted by Carl Anderson on 02/02/2009 @ 09:57PM PT
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I-frames won't embed here.

Posted by Clay Burell on 02/02/2009 @ 10:02PM PT
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Hey Clay,
From a teacher - thank you, thank you, thank you! I am a Diigo newby and wanted to use Diigo to demonstrate a "think aloud" (explicitly modelling my thinking processes) as I critically evaluate web content. I still haven't created that screencast (I use Jing), but yours is a great intro to share with both students and staff. Interactive and modeled reading of the web is, I think, key to supporting the development of critical thinking skills.
When you think of the higher order thinking skills required to thrive in the 21st century - analysis, synthesis and application - Diigo is a wonderful tool for demonstrating what these skills look like. Students learn best when skills and processes are modeled - all facilitated by the bookmarking, highlighting and commenting capabilities.
If you don't mind, I will share your video through my blog later today!
Phooey on the UCLA research on literacy and critical thinking ;)
p.s. Being from Canada, I had difficulty setting up my Diigo education account, but got great support from the folks at Diigo and I am set to go.
p.p.s. Hope you enjoyed the tennis.

Posted by Shannon Smith on 02/03/2009 @ 02:34AM PT
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Share away, Shannon. Glad it was useful :)

You nail the value of screencasts for teaching, imho, by the way.

And phooey indeed. The question shouldn't be "IS technology good or bad for literacy and critical thinking?", because in an age when 28,000 applications are in development as we speak, nobody can know all of them in order to give an authoritative answer.

The question instead should be, "Which toolS does technology provide that enhance literacy and critical thinking?" Web-tools, in particular, since the web is today's book, library, TV, radio, and writing tablet all rolled into one, for more and more young people.

And man, did I enjoy the tennis. First four sets were things of beauty and joys forever.

Posted by Clay Burell on 02/03/2009 @ 04:01AM PT
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Fantastic, I'm running to Diigo. Hypertext lives.

Thx,

Mike

Posted by Michael Kelly on 02/08/2009 @ 09:16AM PT
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"Hypertext lives" is the funniest close I think I've ever read in a comment. Thx for that :)

Posted by Clay Burell on 02/08/2009 @ 09:42AM PT
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This is the stuff! I wish I could see an explosion of such commentary from UK state school teachers of all disciplines. I think we're probably 50-100 years away from that.

I would also add that the framing of video games and TV as unhelpful to learning is probably itself pretty outdated. All these channels are part of the world in which we now live: a learner can always engage with them productively, assuming that valuable skills are not necessarily conventional, academic, typically vocational or even quantifiable. Passivity is the choice of the individual, not the fault of the medium.

Posted by Lisa Amphlett on 02/10/2009 @ 07:26AM PT
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Author

Clay is an American high school Humanities teacher, technology coach, and Apple Distinguished Educator who has taught for the last eight years in Asian international schools. According to law, he's married to his wife. According to his wife, he's married to his Mac.