Alice Mercer and Jennifer Dorman are leading this hands-on Diigo session. Love the ease of sending a Diigo link out to your blog - or to Delicious. The highlighting and annotating features take bookmarking to a next level. “Diigo is way to digest and retrieve information later,” Maggie Tsai, Diigo developer, is explaining.

For classroom teachers, the ability to add definitions, explanations, etc., makes Diigo a great tool for scaffolding access to online text. If the sticky notes get overwhelming, you can hide them. You can also create groups. Worried about monitoring? No problem. You have lots of options that will work with your district’s AUP. You can block to public or open it to let others view it. Use the gmail alias hack to set up students accounts - approved by you. OR…coming soon…teachers will have the option of creating student accounts - without student email accounts.

Diigo = critical literacy tool. Use for reflective writing. When searching a topic, use Diigo instead of Google to provide students with previewed, reviewed sites.

Classroom idea: set up a “tag” dictionary - it’s one of the options available when you create Diigo groups. Makes for easy evaluation: search a tag and then you’ll see which students have annotated the site.

Concept of tagging vs. concept of list - You can switch list into slideshow presentation of the websites you have chosen from Diigo. The pages are “live,” not just images.

Pretty cramped quarters in afternoon session of the today’s EduBloggerCon08 to join Vicki Davis’s Web 2.0 Smack Down session. We’re sharing favorite tools:

• Poll Everywhere - Starting with What Is Your Fav Color poll. Create, save, open poll and public can vote via cell phone. No need to purchase clickers for your classroom! Have kids take the cell phones out of their pockets.
• Chacha.com - Call ChaCha; ask your question; wait for text message question; they have real people behind the service. Uses in classroom? When you don’t have access to the web. 1-800-chacha
• Animoto - Great free service that allows teachers to download 1-minute video.
• PicLens.com - Allows you to take a set of images from Flickr and create a photo wall. Classroom idea: use sets of pictures for teaching a concept.
• CoverItLive.com - Didn’t realize you can create a panel. Classroom application - you can approve panelists comments.
• Qik.com - via your cell phone, you can do live streams. When you start it, it’ll announce it on Twitter too.
• Handipoints.com - Great for keeping tracks of kids “points” for different things.
• Diigo.com - Vicky is sharing Diigo feature to send bookmark to Twitter and to your blogs (using tags).
• Key Chain idea - teachers add tabs to key chain - with “contact me when you’re ready to learn” message on back.
• Webcast Academy - Training for EdTechTalk
• Make Beliefs Comics - Easy - and no advertisements - and developer will be adding “smaller” characters. No need to login; no need for email address. Students can print out or email it.
• www.ajaxim.com - php program that allows you to create your own im network - great for teaching younger students netiquette.
• doodle.ch - Allows you to solve problem of how to see when you can meet. Doesn’t require login or profile. Voting for selecting meeting date is “egregiously” simple.
• Timebridge - Works with Google Calendar and with Outlook - will send out email.
• taggalaxy.de - takes images from flickr and loads them and assembles them into globe, that’s clickable.
• Webkinz - Use to teach younger kids about being digital citizens. Has chat rooms.
• exalead.com - Backchannels options for students
• Plurk.com - alternative to Twitter - bit more of a learning curve, but has more options.

Very high-energy session!

The full title for this session is Digital Storytelling as the Disruptive Change Agent. Wes is starting with fact that student and teachers have little opportunity for feedback - and development - once they’ve created a digital story. Kevin’s Celebrate Oklahoma oral histories project taps into technologies such as a ning for creating the digital storytelling community.

The Oaklahoma Project was set up for interviewing veterans. The project started with GCast to record an interview over the phone (GabCast works too - both are free).

Advantage of uploading and sharing digital stories on the open web, comments are a possibility, connecting and reconnecting family members. We’re listening to the Lillie and John story amazing story - incredibly well written + music - quite the emotional impact. Check out Hank Thompson’s World War II story.

Digital storytelling in the classroom is a golden opportunity to teach positive, constructive use of technology. Maybry digital storytelling awards, for example, have changed student lives. How to get teachers going with filmmaking? Give a deadline and an event (e.g., Veteran’s Day). Time is the number one challenge, but by getting the students involved and having them use time outside of school will also help kickstart a project.

One widget I’ve not added to my sidebar is my De.licio.us account. I tag sites to Delicious on a regular basis (although I am slowly moving over to Diigo), but have never taken the time to keep it very organized. After reading an email from Kevin this morning with an invitation to jump in and play with Wordle, I have a new spin on Delicious…

Note: To upload your Wordle image, first take a screenshot with the PrintScreen option (or via SnagIt or Jing) and save it as a jpeg in MS Paint. Once you’ve saved your image, you can upload it with the Add media - image option.