This chapter left me a little cold in terms of how I could use it in my sixth-grade classroom. For one thing, Richardson’s comment that “Twitter is a bit too Wild West” (p. 88) was a huge red flag that this tool wouldn’t work well at my grade level. Another problem I see is the brevity of the writing that can be done. While on the surface that may seem great, at this grade level we are working very hard to get students to write more in their responses by providing details and explanations. Having them write in a format that inhibits that ability seems counter productive. It seems like a more appropriate tool for the upper grades when you are working to teach students to write more densely.
The social bookmarking may have more practical uses for the grade level I teach. I’ve always believed in the adage, “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.” Tagging seems like a great way to piggyback on research other people have done on topics that are relevant to others with the same interests and/or research needs. I like the idea of using Diigo to tag relevant sites and annotate the sites to guide students as they utilize it. I’d have to get into it and really figure it out for myself first, but on paper it sounds like it could be a great tool to customize searches for particular classroom/student needs.
I agree that Twitter just seems like too short a format and too wide open. I signed on to "TOP TWITTERS" and there is a LOT of Justin Beiber--not much use in the classroom. On the other hand, I had been judging without knowing and found other Twitter feeds that are actually kind of like headlines that connect you to an in-depth article. The 60 Minutes Twitter goes to their vidoes of stories, and White House Twitters go to summarries of info about energy, environment, education, etc.
ReplyDeleteI have not tried Delicious, but tooled around a little with Diigo and can see ways to use it. Sounds like you use lots of stuff in Social Studies from outside sources. I use news articles a lot and the Diigolet tool saved me time in putting sticky notes and highlights on the piece I project to discuss with the class. I also like the fact that you can keep the copy if the source is taken off the web. If we only had more time to mess around with this stuff.