Blog Post 6: Diigo and Web 2.0

     I procrastinated a lot with the Diigo activities because I found the website hard to understand at first. It was more so the concept of a social bookmarking tool that I did not understand since I have never used one. Honestly, though, now that I learned how to use it, I can see why people like it. When I first made my account I was taken to my group's feed, and the interface of that page looked weird to me, like an outdated Facebook theme, so I was kind of put off. However, the rest of the website has a fun and simple interface and was very easy to use. The annotating feature was the coolest thing for me, it really showcased why people like these so much. There was so much to do! Also, there is a cool extension that you can download onto Chrome which syncs up to the articles in different websites so you can annotate from there, so I am looking forward to learning more about that. In all, I can see how Diigo has its place in the Web 2.0 experience. It is a place where you can share resources and make the most out of them, which is the core of the dynamic user experience Web 2.0 was made to offer. 

    Blogging every week is pretty cool. So far, every education course I have taken has involved writing a lot of long, formal papers, which is not bad, but these blogs are a breath of fresh air. I can speak more informally while applying the things I learn in the class to my day-to-day life, further solidifying my understanding of them. And even though these blog posts are not as formal as an APA paper, they should still be taken seriously since these are words we are posting publically. It's like the stakes are a little different, but the end-goal of successfully understanding the material is still the same. One challenge I face with blogging, that I am trying to improve on is staying on topic. Since these are casual blog posts, I tend to go on tangents and ramble about things that are off-topic. 

    A Web 2.0 tool that I would use in my future classroom is Edmodo. I may be a little biased because I used it a lot in elementary and middle school, but I always thought it was a really cool platform. Edmodo is a social media platform for the classroom, teachers and students can create posts, comment, ask questions, post polls, or even quizzes for the class to take. When I first used Edmodo in the fifth grade my science teacher called it "a Facebook, but for school", and I always thought that was a pretty good descriptor. Although I used Edmodo some time ago, I am choosing it for the classroom because it seems to be evolving and constantly updating to fit modern classrooms with an increasing amount of cool features. In other words, the early versions of Edmodo I used when I was younger, although cool at the time, would definitely feel outdated now and the platform has done a good job at staying updated. Since Edmodo resembles social media people are used to, it seems like a good tool because most students can get the hang of it pretty easily. 

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