R/D3

When asked to define instructional technology, I think of it as being composed of two main parts: theory and application. When I mention theory, I am referring to the study of how behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and multimedia learning theories are applied to instruction. It involves analyzing how people think and what should be present in or removed from a learning process to maximize the efficiency of learning. Application involves optimizing the process through the integration of technology. It centers on utilizing theory to make decisions about the design and implementation of different instructional media. Application not only requires theoretical knowledge, it requires technical knowledge. I agree with the Robert Reiser when he says that the name “instructional design and technology” better defines our field than “instructional technology” because I often use the latter term interchangeably with the term “instructional media.” One part of instructional design and technology that I have not thought as much about is the management function, which involves project, delivery system, personnel, and information management according to the 2006 AECT definition of technology. Naturally, I tend to think of instructional technology and design more from a teacher’s perspective than a technology coordinator’s perspective and forget about the management aspect.

One application of instructional technology that I was asked to evaluate this week was social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is defined by Wikipedia as "a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata." In contrast to the standard bookmark tool built into the web browser menus, social bookmarking websites allow access to the same set of bookmarks from any computer with Internet connectivity. And instead of trying to sort standard browser bookmarks by placing them in individual folders, social bookmarking essentially lets you place them in multiple folders represented by keywords, a process referred to as “tagging.” You can later recall bookmarks by using those tags to search your bookmarks. Social bookmarking websites also typically allow a user to join (or create their own) groups where people with common interests share bookmarks. Additionally, many social bookmarking sites allow you to follow an individual user’s bookmarking activity.

Two social bookmarking sites that I’ve tried are Delicious and Diigo. Both sites have all of the standard bookmarking features described above, a user-friendly toolbar add-on for your browser, and the option of public or private bookmarking. But Diigo hosts many additional features that Delicious lacks. Diigo lets you highlight content on web pages and pin comments to the content with the option of this markup being either public or private. Other Diigo users can then view and respond to your markup. It also has tools that let you capture images from web sites, import/export bookmarks, simultaneously save bookmarks to delicious, and automate a daily/weekly blog post of your bookmarks with comments. And if that’s not enough to convince you that Diigo is the way to go, Diigo has premium educator accounts with these features:

• creation of class set of student accounts (email addresses are optional) with a few clicks

• automatic set up of Diigo groups organized by class

• privacy settings where only teachers and classmates can communicate with students

• ads limited to education-related sponsors

I should also mention that Diigo offers tools for use on the iPhone, iPad, and Android!

So where could Diigo be used in education? At the very least, it can function as an enhanced bookmark organization tool for an individual. But then that wouldn’t be social bookmarking so the easiest social bookmarking application is to use it for following education leaders and innovators, checking out the resources that they bookmark. Of course it can also be used for networking with educators on a school, district, or state level. One use with students would be to mark up a subject-related website with sticky notes containing questions about specific parts of the content. Students could then post responses to the question on the sticky note. Another application is to assign online readings to students in which they highlight words that are new to them and define them in their own words with the comment tool. They could also use the comment tool for any kind of literary analysis such as paragraph summaries or questions they have about parts of the readings which other students could then respond to. Furthermore, the Diigo toolbar could be used in conjunction with Google Docs (or blog posts) as a peer editing tool. Finally, there is an obvious application to online research assignments. Diigo makes it easy to bookmark, annotate, and organize online resources.

So while I would say that Delicious would be good for independent research and sharing resources with peers, I believe that the extra tools provided by Diigo significantly expand social bookmarking’s range of applications.

Resources:

Diigo Educator Accounts

Getting Started With Diigo