Blog Post 6

Diigo Experience

After using Diigo a little bit for this class, I do see the benefits of using this platform for personal and academic uses. I like the fact that I can keep links for different resources all in one place and write short annotations to remind myself exactly what each resource is about. During high school, I had to use a website called NoodleTools that was quite similar. However, this website also created citations for each resource in whichever format I needed them to be in. I think this was an extremely helpful function of NoodleTools that I wish was an option on Diigo. However, I think a lot of the advanced functions on NoodleTools are paywalled. My high school paid for the advanced use of NoodleTools for all of their students, but I am not sure if it is something I would pay for out-of-pocket. Because of this, I could definitely see myself utilizing Diigo in the future instead.

Blogging Experience

My experience with blogging has been going pretty well in my opinion. I have never really blogged before, but I do not find this very different from writing a more personal or opinion-based discussion board post on Canvas. I like that I can personalize my posts with photos, fun fonts, and other unique design elements that Canvas does not offer. I also like that you give us prompts to guide our writing. A lack of guiding prompts will likely hinder my interest in blogging beyond this class. However, since I am a Media/Communication Studies major, I do enjoy writing and I love learning more about my peers through reading their blog posts.

Future Classroom Use of Web 2.0 Tools

If I were to become a teacher, I would utilize a Web 2.0 tool called Flipboard in my classroom. Flipboard is another website/app that I used in one of my high school classes that is somewhat similar to Diigo and NoodleTools. Flipboard is a tool that you can use to cultivate and organize material from journalistic news sources for both personal and group sharing use. Users can follow different general topics and specific news sources on the platform in order to find the stories they are looking for. In the classroom setting, I would create a class “magazine” for students to join and share news stories that they find interesting and apply to class material. I found Flipboard to be an interesting tool to help my peers and me stay up-to-date with current events, which is very important for developing curiosity, open-mindedness, and global citizenship.