Week 3: Communicating via your blog and Social Bookmarking

Congratulations on making it to week 3 of our online adventure! If you are on track, you have completed Things 1-5. You’ve read and navigated a blog, learned to post a comment, you’ve created your own blog to reflect on our course activities, written your own post, linked to another website, added a widget to your blog, and have shared your thoughts on how blogging can be used in education. That’s a lot of stuff for just a couple of weeks. Pat yourself on the back. You deserve it!  This week, we are going to focus on making on connections with your fellow classmates.

Thing 6 -Communicating via your blog

One the great things about blogs is the capability to connect with other people who have similar interests. For Thing 6, you are going to comment on some of your colleagues’ new blogs. Because this course is mainly online, it will be important for you to take time to read the reflections of your classmates on their blogs as you all work on the tasks for each week. One of the goals of the course is for you to have some sense of community, even though you are working independently online. We will all get so much more out of the course if we share our thoughts and ideas and provide feedback to each other. I’m always amazed at how much I learn from other educators that I communicate with online via blogs and other social media.

So, here’s your task for Thing 6. Choose at least 3 of your colleagues’ blogs (see the sidebar on the right), and post a comment on their first post. Be sure you sign your name to your comment. I have really enjoyed reading everyone’s thoughts on blogging in education, and it was interesting to see the blogs you linked to as being of interest to you. If you haven’t posted your blog yet, make sure you do so as soon as possible so that you will get some comments from your colleagues from this week’s assignment. Let’s try to “share the comment love” and if you notice that someone’s blog has not received any comments yet, you might choose to give them some feedback.  I want you to get in the habit of reading each other’s reflections each week and communicate with each other.

For the over-achiever:
Add a photo of yourself to your blog profile. You can see an example of this on this blog. Just take a look on the right sidebar where it says About Me. You’ll see a cartoon photograph of me. Having a photo of yourself on your blog will give it a more personal feel and will let your online friends put a face to your name. Here’s a video that shows you how to do this step-by-step.


Adding a Photo to Your Blogger Profile - http://youtu.be/ikH-LYCY36E

Thing 7 – Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a great way to organize all of the websites you like to use, and it lets you keep them in one place where you can access them anywhere you have internet access. Even better, it lets you share them with others! Watch the following video to get a great explanation of social bookmarking. Note: The video reference a site called Delicious. We will not be using that site for our bookmarking. We will be using a newer, more powerful site called Diigo. But, the video is still a great intro to the concept.




Social Bookmarking in Plain English - http://youtu.be/IMsT6Zsa_FQ

Now that you get the basic idea of what social bookmarking is and why you would want to use it as an educator, let’s take a look at Diigo, the tool we will be using in our workshop.

Diigo V5: Collect and Highlight, Then Remember! from diigobuzz on Vimeo.

Pretty neat, isn’t it? Watch the following three short videos to learn how you can use Diigo to “research, share, and collaborate”. I think it will give you more of a feel of how powerful this tool can be.

Your next step is to sign up for your own Diigo account. The following tutorial video will walk you through the process.


 How to sign up for a Diigo account - http://youtu.be/cOqfQ3iDfN0

Now that you have your account set up, you need to add the Diigo toolbar to your web browser. Here’s a video tutorial to show you what to do.


How to add the Diigo Toolbar to Your Web Browser - http://youtu.be/r8R5gfjkt14

Next, you want to add some bookmarks.   I suggest bookmarking our 21 Things blog and the blogs of your colleagues. You can also add any other sites you wish. Here’s how to do it:


How to Add a Bookmark Using Diigo - http://youtu.be/_XcMpW32REA

If you want to explore more features of the program, check out the Diigo help page.

Your final task this week is to write your reflection post on your blog. Share your thoughts about how you might be able to use social bookmarking in your job.

Here’s a checklist of this week’s tasks:

Thing 6:

• comment on 3 classmates blog posts (see the sidebar for links to their sites)
• add a photo to your blog profile (optional)

Thing 7:

• Watch the Common Craft video on social bookmarking
• Watch the Diigo overview video
• Watch the 3 Diigo videos to get a more in-depth feel for the program
• Set up your own Diigo account
• Install the Diigo toolbar on your web browser
• Bookmark some websites using the Diigo bookmark feature
• Write your reflection post on your own blog about this week’s tasks

Don’t forget that we have our first optional face-to-face session on Tuesday, October 1 at 4:00 in the Cedar Ridge Intermediate library. We can look more in depth at Diigo, I can show you more features of your blog (especially how to remove the nav bar if you made one to use with your students), and you’ll get to meet everyone in person.