As our world becomes more competitive and intellectually advanced, the key to success will be based on a foundation of specialized knowledge in given subject areas. This is the beauty of this PLE and scientific inquiry, where the learner is the center of learning, with the focus being on the depth and breadth of their knowledge in a specialized area. This specialized knowledge is what will drive innovation, creativity, and success in the 21st century .
The tools listed inside this module are fantastic examples of the driving factor of inquiry. Inquiry is most successful when the user has an interest and feels ownership of knowledge. The listed websites allow for efficient and effective growth in knowledge, regarding particular topics. Collecting information and organizing it online, is the beauty behind the social bookmarking, digital note taking, and web clipping.
Personally, I find the social bookmarking feature to be the most beneficial to me within my current setting. By establishing an account in Google Reader, the RSS feeds are constantly incoming to keep me up to date on the most current happenings in my fields of interest. Along with allowing for instantaneous updates, social bookmarking provides an organizational structure for said information. I think digital note taking and web clipping serve a beneficial means by emphasizing the most salient points within a given article. This ability to highlight the salient points in each article provides the ability to specialize on subtopics within each broader topic.
This was the first time I have experienced the site Diigo, which I found to be fascinating. Sites like Diigo, will greatly increase digital literacy and learning in future generations of students. As the wave of the educational future follows the path of digitized text and open source forums, it will be crucial for students to be able to read and comprehend materials they find online. Diigo allows users to highlight, "snap shot", outline, organize, and place "post it notes" on key ideas within the text. As mentioned, this only begins to scratch the true surface of Diigo. All of the information you store within this program is stored in the "cloud", which makes it accessible from any location with internet access: including mobile phones.
Yes, your last comment is key to understand what is happening in the education field. According to Horizont Report 2011, two technologies will impact education within one year: E-books and Mobiles. Mobiles will provide access to your memory and knowledge stored in the cloud in the form of documents and links. One thing is giving a lot of thinking lately. What if I loose that access one day? What shall I do?
ReplyDeleteI have been using Diigo with my students for two years now and I love it! I find it is really helpful for narrowing down their searches, too. They can search for sites that others have bookmarked and use those. We all know how overwhelming the Internet is and how difficult it is to find good sites. Diigo is just another way to help narrow it down to a reasonable amount.
ReplyDeleteDo you like Google Reader?