Organizing Web Content: Symbaloo & Diigo - Unit 2, Activity 1

Adding Content to Symbaloo and Diigo

Your next task is to begin using both Symbaloo and Diigo to organize more new content. Unfortunately, we need to create somewhat artificial tasks for you to accomplish this, but we will try to make it as relevant as possible by focusing on reading current educational-oriented articles and finding lessons and resources for use in your classroom.

One of the more important decisions you will have in this class is determining when to use Diigo and when to use Symbaloo. For this class, make Diigo the collector tool--use it like a vacuum to collect everything you are exposed to: articles, websites, web tools--literally everything. Think of Diigo as the archive to hold resources you may need later but are not sure when. Symbaloo, on the other hand, is for posting content, so saving everything there is impractical.

Rather, use Symbaloo for two purposes:

1. Holding content you will use personally multiple times or
2. Posting groups of resources for students or colleagues, even if they only use it once or multiple times.

For example, you may read an article on The 10 Biggest Trends in Ed Tech from THE Journal--you most likely will not return to this specific article over and over again on a regular basis, so you would not post the specific article on your Symbaloo Webmix. On the other hand, the THE Journal website where the article came from may be something you return to on a regular basis to see new articles, so you should post that on your Symbaloo Webmix. Both resources, the article and the website, you should bookmark in Diigo. Let's say over time you remove THE Journal website from your Symbaloo webmix but later wish to find it again--you can use Diigo as your archive to retrieve it.

Adding More Resources to Symbaloo (and Diigo)

These are resources we will come back to for this class, so save these to your Symbaloo professional webmix and to Diigo:

1. THE Journal, http://thejournal.com
2. Technology and Learning, http://www.techlearning.com/
3. Free Technology For Teachers, http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

Using Diigo to Bookmark Content

• From your Symbaloo webmix above, visit THE Journal, Technology and Learning, and Free Technology for Teachers over the next few days.
• Bookmark at least twelve articles or web resources from these in Diigo.
• Use many different tags depending on the content, but be sure to use tieclass as one of your tags for each article/resource you bookmark.