Today I got my first badge. I was approved to open a Diigo Educator Account, and to show their "sincere appreciation to those educators who are taking pioneering steps in getting their students and/or their peers started on collaborative research using Diigo’s powerful features" they have created nifty badges for educators to post on their websites (Diigo, 2011). I even got to choose a colour that matches my blog design!
I am now an official badge-carrying Diigo Education Pioneer. Acquiring my first badge led me to investigate the Web 2.0 badge phenomenon. For more information please have a read of this blog post.I have been using Diigo, a social bookmarking tool, since February of this year, but along with a few other Web 2.0 tools I enthusiastically signed up for in the same month (Symbaloo and Tumblr to name a couple), I have either ignored their existence or grossly underutilized their potential. Diigo falls into the grossly neglected category. I quickly learned how to create lists and downloaded the Diigo toolbar onto my desktop, and for the past seven months I have accumulated approximately 150 articles, blog posts, websites, slideshares, archived webinars, videos, and the like. It reminds me of my first few years of teaching when I photocopied entire teaching units with little thought given towards the usability of the stacks of paper I proudly labeled and filed. (And then recycled twelve years later in a massive purge that was initiated by a peculiar smell emanating from one corner of the garage. Several shredded box corners later we discovered what must have been small animal remains sloshing around inside a spare tire.)
And, here I am, back in that same rut, gathering more resources than I could ever need (digital resources, mind, but resources nonetheless), and flying solo on a social bookmarking site. So my goals are to: a) ease up on my hoarding tendencies; b) get connected with others on Diigo; and, c) discover the differences between this new Diigo Educator Account I have and my personal Diigo Account I originally acquired back in February.
Next post: Pioneering update.
References
Diigo V5.0 beta. (2011). "Wear your 'Diigo education pioneer badge' with pride :-)." Retrieved from http://www.diigo.com/teacher_entry/get_badge
I appreciate how you are doing all of this work and I get to benefit from it. When you are done, please advise as to which technologies will work the best in a classroom setting such as the ones we are going to have..... cheers!
ReplyDeleteIt is just like Brownies, earning badges for a job well done. We never get too old for the gold star on our papers.
ReplyDeleteI regret ignoring the badge Diigo sent me now. I wasn't much of a Brownie either...not enough badges to fly up.
ReplyDelete