Let's ALL Join the Librarian

 

Using Diigo in the Library and for Classroom Projects

"Gone are the days where you dial in your librarian" for getting links.  So an instructor said earlier this week, and as a school librarian who has spent hours building resource lists, it would be great if Diigo and sites like it would lead collaboratively to the strong, reliable resources in LESS TIME for the students.  (Experience says that if you want to convince a student to go beyond Google, you must prove the alternative to be both better and quicker.)  I agree that dialing in teachers, librarians, tech coordinators, and students can vastly expand the number of resources available.  I believe that people should think about at least two things as they embrace the great resource that Diigo can become:

1) Source evaluation.  Used well, Diigo offers the opportunity for in-depth and continued feedback for users.  Unfortunately, that's like saying that Google offers amazing resources.  Of course Google offers great resources, but if you always go to the links to Yahoo Answers and Wikipedia, or never go beyond the first page of responses (or don't know how to craft a solid search to make sure that there are great responses on the first page), then it becomes a problem.  A link might be posted without thought as to its veracity, and a dozen people might comment on the problem without a person paying attention to the comments.

2) Independent work - Diigo offers community feedback, taking advantage of the work of others to inspire and expand your own research.  Diigo can also be used by students who don't want to do the research themselves to take advantage of the provided links and highlighted text and go no further.

When working with younger students with less experience in source evaluation, the first point is important because one wants to make sure that there is good guidance towards high quality sources.  In working with older students with more experience, the second point is important because there is a goal to wean these students off over-dependence on others and help them learn to trust their skills and abilities.

So how can the librarian best take advantage of Diigo?  Consider using Diigo for a group of instructors to build the resource list and make this viewable by younger students, but not a collaborative project with the students.  Consider taking some of the time saved because students will be getting added feedback and support during the research process, and put that time towards additional work on source evaluation.  With older students, have the community build entirely through student input, with the instructors only adding comments, not original links.  Finally, with all students, remember that if the question can be answered simply through Google, Wikipedia, or the Diigo, then we probably aren't asking the right questions in the first place.  

As a modern school librarian, I come to the same conclusion I have come to many times over the past few years.  Namely, Great tools like Diigo keep my job constantly changing on the surface, but they do not replace me and my fellow educators.  

What do you think are some important things to keep in mind as we create lesson plans for using Diigo?

PS. I'm also psyched about using Diigo for my non class-specific projects, like National Novel Writing Month.  What a great tool for sharing resources!  And unlike twitter, it doesn't come and go like a flash in the pan!  (The tweet comes and goes, not Twitter the resource itself.)

Image Citation: 

Branson, B. (1987). Librarian Accessing PDQ. National Cancer Institute. Retrieved May 15, 2014 from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Librarian_accessing_pdq.jpg.