Module 4: Diigo vs. Pinterest

Diigo Vs. Pinterest 

Both Diigo and Pinterest are social bookmarking sites that are great resources for teachers and students alike. I'd like to share a comparison of the two site with you so you can decide which you'd like to use!

• Highlighting Text:

 In Diigo you can highlight the text that you find interesting or important on a page so you can refer back to it later or share with someone else. With Pinterest, you can't highlight but there are also great features to Pinterest as well.

• Multiple Tags:

Diigo makes it very easy to put multiple tags on sites that you share to your profile. In Pinterest, when you save a pin, you can tag it under the picture just before you click save. I've used Pinterest for years and I've rarely tagged anything. I just save it to my profile for myself. Now that I know about tagging, I will use the tag feature of Pinterest because it's quite useful for others who are searching for the same thing.

• Copying and Pasting using Diigo and Pinterest:

Both sites allow you to copy and paste from the original article to appear in the comments (tag) section.

• Can others post comments on your site?

For Pinterest, people cannot comment on your profile but they can make a comment on your pin. I never utilize this tool. When I did, I found no one replied. For Diigo, you can highlight texts you read on someone's page but you can't comment.

• Can you follow others on Pinterest and Diigo? Can they follow you?

Pinterest as a very clearly labeled "follow" button on a person's profile but Diigo does not. You can follow anyone on Pinterest and they can follow you. You can clearly see at the top of you profile on Pinterest who is following you and who you follow.

• Can you message people you follow?

On Pinterest you can message anyone you follow and they can message you. On Diigo, you cannot send private messages like you can on Pinterest.

• Are you offered suggestions for related articles?

Pinterest suggests things for you based on what you pin to your profile. You can switch this off if you got to settings, though. I find it to be a very useful feature. On Diigo's home page there are no suggestions offered to you based on what you add to your library.

Overall, Pinterest is more user friendly and organized. The pins are pictures and you can clearly see what people share and save. Diigo is useful too because it allows users to highlight things from websites which is very useful! I will definitely continue to use both of these as they both have great benefits. 

Module 3: Technology and Motivation

As a person who has deleted social media accounts and is currently trying not to constantly be on my cell phone and computer, I am also trying to be a better teacher. This course is surprising me and opening my mind to the great things technology can bring to our lives and can bring to our classroom.

I recently watched  a few videos about technology and the importance of technology in education. Future Learning is a mini documentary about how to engage students for the technologically-advanced future that they will face. Education innovators like Dr. Sugata Mitra, Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy; and Dr. Catherine Lucey, Vice Dean of Education at UCSF, share their views on technology and education and some of the things they shared, quick frankly, blew my mind.

Dr. Sugata Mitra mentioned a good point when he discussed that old educational modals were developed as military education, while Sal Khan says that old educational modals where students do drills and a teacher talks at them was a way to make people submissive. Today, however, we must prepare students for their future and their future will be a world that revolves around technology.

I think about my childhood without a computer and without the internet and compare it to today's children who grow up with technology in their hand the moment they're able to hold objects and I realize, yes, this is indeed their future. For me it's a bit of a sad realization that today's children will grow up so vastly different that I did. However, this documentary opened my mind to how we can use technology for educational purposes and I felt a bit of relief when I saw how truly engaged young learners are when they are learning via video games, iPads, and the internet.

I loved Sugata Mitra's experiment where he put computers in the slums in India. These were places where children had no idea what the internet was and had never seen a computer. However, he discovered that children in groups can teach themselves how to use a computer. He later said that learning is limitless when you remove the teacher, give children the ability to interact with each other and give them the internet. For me this was a powerful piece of the documentary. Children are motivated by technology and they can learn from technology and from working with each other.

Another important point and probably more relevant to my teaching was what Catherine Lucy, Vice Dean of Education at UCSF, said regarding adult education and technology. She said that adults learn something when they have a reason to learn it. Medical students at UCSF can learn anatomy from an application that puts it into real life perspective for them. As a teacher of ESL adult education, I thought about the ways that my students will need to use the internet for everyday life in the U.S. Many of my students are looking for jobs and many applications are online. They are all so eager to work and support their families. They know they need basic computer skills and have all recently enrolled in a course to learn how to use a computer. Something I can do to help them will be to bring them to the computer lab and practice searching for jobs and doing online practice job applications. I know they will be motivated by this because they are motivated to find work and provide for their families. This a a simple and basic way I can bring technology into my classroom that is relevant to my students' everyday lives.

Another video that I watched was Social Media Revolution. I purposefully chose to watch this because I over the past few years I see friends and family members addicted to social media and I have begun to hate social media because of it. So, I watched this video and learned about the impact of social media on our world. What I learned was that no matter what I do, social media is impacting the world so much that it's hard to live without. In regards to education, the thing that surprised me the most was that generations Y and Z consider email old technology and that some universities have even stopped giving email addresses! Yes...this was a wake up call for me, a previous self-proclaimed hater-of-technology...I need to wake up and realize my students need me to jump on the technology train!

At the end of the day what I gathered about my new views of technology was this:

Even though I hate certain aspects of technology (like people constantly on their phones and on social media) I can appreciate what technology can do in a classroom and I realized how technology is a great motivational tool for students of all ages.

Technology can be a great tool for educators and students. Our lives are centered around technology and in the future we won't be able to do some of the things we do now without technology. So, it is our duty as educators to bring technology into our classroom. Technology is quite fun in the classroom! When students are having fun, they are motivated and learn.

Using Blogs in the Classroom

I am new to the blogging world but after reading about how teachers and students can use them and familiarizing myself with Blogger, I realized how much they can enhance teaching and learning.

I teach adult refugees and in my current class, most of the students have little to no computer knowledge/skills. We have a small computer lab in our school that rarely gets used because our students usually don't know how to even turn it on. I recently found a free computer basics class for ESL students and encouraged my students to go. They all signed up and start this Saturday.

After students' typing and basics computer skills move upwards, I could use blogs in the classroom to create space for students to discuss cultural differences between their native countries and the U.S. They could compare things related to government, holidays and American culture. One of the goals in Adult Education ESL is preparing students for citizenship. On the blog, I could also post links and videos for students as resources to study for the citizenship exam. Since the class in multicultural, this would give the students a way to demonstrate an understanding of American life and compare it to their native country as well as to their classmates' native countries.

Performance Indicator-ESL.C.9-12.5.1.2: Students demonstrate an understanding of a broad range of U.S. cultural and political referents through institutions, functions, and processes at the local and national levels, and compare/contrast these with parallels in the students' native community.


I also liked the idea of using blogs to create an ongoing portfolio. I think this is a great way to motivate students to see how they progress. Often times students get frustrated because they don't notice their progress. Putting their work on a blog, however, allows them to look back at their old work and see how far they've come. They could also comment on their progress as they go.

Performance Indicator- ESL.C.9-12.3.1.4: Students evaluate their own and others' work, individually and collaboratively, on the basis of a variety of criteria, and recognize how chosen criteria affect evaluation.

NYS Learning Standards