Diigo - The Missing Pieces

Diigo - The Missing Pieces

An aspect about this fantastic Web 2.0 tool that I did not include in my posts, here, here, and here, is the way that Diigo supports educators who set up student accounts. Student accounts have the following special settings to protect the privacy and safety of students:

• Classmates in the same class are automatically added as friends with one another to facilitate communication, but students cannot add anyone else as friends except through email.
• Students can only communicate with their friends and teachers. No one except their friends can send message, group invite, or write on their profile wall.
• Student profiles will not be indexed for People Search, nor made available to public search engines (FAQ, n.d., para. 3). 

I am returning to Diigo again to support a Physical Education teacher in my school. This innovative teacher (who happens to be my amazing husband) teaches an online Grade 11/12 PE course for students who cannot fit PE into their schedule during the traditional "school hours". I created three screencasts for this group which can be viewed on the school library wiki for the next week or so (see gadget on the right), but after reflecting over the process I have recommended that my husband apply for a Diigo Educator Account. This will allow easier monitoring of his students as they get started with their "collaborative research using Diigo’s powerful web annotation and social bookmarking technology" (Announcing Diigo Educator Accounts, 2008, para. 4).

After receiving approval for an educator account, a teacher can then add students to a group. Diigo then generates a username and password for each student, and conveniently provides it in printable format for the teacher to distribute to the students. It looks like this:



Professionally
Diigo will certainly figure prominently in my Web 2.0 future. Since working with the Grade 9 students on the epic works project, I have had requests from the PE teacher (see above) and the Grade 8 English/Social Studies teacher for help in designing units that use the features offered by Diigo.

I have to agree with Higgins, as quoted by Anonymous (2011), when he says, "Diigo Groups I like to think of as the gateway drug for a lot of the teachers I work with, as email is something we can all handle at this point. Joining a Diigo Group is a painless process, and depending on the activity level of the group, the resources you find on a daily basis are tremendous"(p. 30). I hope to get many more teachers hooked on Diigo, and even if they are resistant, I believe the students will spread the word and demand it.

I am more than happy to deliver.

References
Announcing Diigo Educator Accounts. (September 18, 2008). Retrieved from http://blog.diigo.com/2008/09/19/announcing-diigo-educator-accounts/
Anonymous. (2011). Schoolcio profile: Patrick Higgins. Tech & Learning, 32(3), 30.  Retrieved from ProQuest Education Journals. doi: 2494322031.
FAQ. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://help.diigo.com/teacher-account/faq#TOC-Q:-What-are-student-accounts-