Compromise: how often do you do it with technology in schools?

I ask this question because it sheds light on the current state of my attempts to bring about more use of multimedia in my school. This previous blog post provided a commentary on the difficulties I was having in trying to use external websites to begin a process of encouraging other teachers to use innovative, [...]

Using Cool Iris to present podcasts, diigo and the VLE

I was asked recently to provide a talk to another school in the town where I work on how the work I have been doing relates to the concept of developling Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills (PLTS). I approached this from the angle of how I have been using multimedia to develop reflective learners – [...]

Early problems in collaborating with multimedia

Part of the difficulty about being a reflective practitioner is that its often easy to post stories of your successes on here; often its not so easy to discuss and try and pick apart what’s not going so well. Stay with me: hopefully there are lessons here that maybe lessons for you if you are [...]

An evaluation of using Diigo.com with students

Having used diigo with a class for a period of a few months (and now said class is off on exam leave and unlikely to be using it for a few months), I feel that now is a good time to reflect on how I’ve been using it in a classroom environment over the past [...]

Teaching a lesson using diigo – part 2

   The second lesson using diigo gave me an opportunity to consolidate what had worked well the first time I’d used it with a class and also to try and provide more of a framework to make sure students used the features on diigo to give them a challenging learning experience. Students were to look [...]

Recognising the internet isn’t all *that*

With all the internet research going on in my classroom, I’ve been wanting to do a ‘clarifying why the internet is excellent, but why you need to be careful as well.’ Our kids take information far too much for granted and its likely that a key skill employers will demand in the future is recognising [...]

First thoughts on using diigo in class….

    Yesterday I used diigo for the first time with students in my class. I’d previously had to consider the always prevalent issue of e-safety when getting ready to use this website with my students. Diigo makes this problem relatively easy to solve, because student accounts that you can create are much more restricted [...]

Plans afoot with diigo and skype

Over the next few weeks in school I’m beginning to push out in some new areas with regards to using technology in the classroom. I’m beginning to feel relatively comfortable and proficient with podcasting, through the use of audacity. I hope in the future to start the process of getting other teachers in my school [...]

Share Tabs

With thanks to langwitches for pointing me in this direction. Share tabs seems to follow on neatly from my previous post on Diigo, because it is another website that deals with making the internet more accessible, with the added bonus of being of great use to teachers. The idea of the website feels like one [...]

Diigo.com

The subject of this week’s blog is diigo, a website that I have been getting to grips with in the past week or so. I think it offers a real chance to change practice within the classroom. Firstly, its features: Diigo is a free service that allows you to trawl the web and bookmark websites [...]