Diigo is an interesting and convenient bookmarking
tool. It can be utilized in our everyday life whenever browsing the web or reading
articles online. This reminds me another popular social bookmarking tool called
Delicious which is quite similar to Diigo. I am sure some of you also know
them. As for its educational usage, I think teachers can use Diigo as a
complimentary tool for instruction. There are many available online resources
about the educational use of Diigo. I just did a little searching and picked
some, which I think would be helpful for us to understand its application in
education.
Social bookmarking - Diigo for Teachers
10 Reasons to use Diigo
Student Learning with Diigo
As for Second Life, I am still skeptical about
its educational value. The designing concepts of Second Life seem very fancy and
advanced. There are also some successful examples of using Second Life in
education. However, I still cannot figure out the sufficient reasons for spend so
much money on purchasing a virtual island and building a virtual community. I
remember last week Fang showed us the virtual Graves Hall which is “under
construction”. There is a “test room” on the second floor in this building. If a teacher sets up
a test in this “room”, his or her students’ need to move their avatars to this “place”
and take the test in this virtual room. Students may think that is cool and
interesting at the beginning, but I doubt if they will feel the same after doing
that for several times. Why would I spend extra time to log on Second Life and try
to find the right “test room” if I can just simply take the text online? For
teachers, the cost of using Second Life and the required technology skills are
relatively high. There are still a lot of issues of Second Life for researchers
to discuss and resolve.
I agree with you, Zhetao, about Second Life. I'm not convinced it's all that valuable. Sure, it's neat at first glance, but it also seems clumsy in some ways...and in my humble opinion seems more like a barrier than a gateway to learning. I've tried to remain open-minded about it because this skepticism I have toward it could be generational (I'm a good bit older than most college students - duh), and I've never been much of a gamer, so maybe that's why it doesn't appeal to me.
ReplyDeleteI too feel like Second Life might not be as suited for my class as I thought. It seems cool. But the work involved for one activity seems to be overwhelming. When I've thought of scenarios on how I could use Second Life, I've doubted how effective it would be. If anything, I was trying to see if there is another program that is more basic (as you can see I'm not into the whole video game thing) which could do something similar...?
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