After visiting all 3 sites, my gutt feeling was towards Diigo as the most usable for education. After analysis, let’s see if this feeling changes

Similarities between tools

• They all allow the ability to share web locations with other users through a browser integrated funcationality
• Diigo and Del.icio.us allow tagging for each resourse – SimplyBox does not seem to have that ability
• Diigo and SimplyBox allow one to “keep” or “bookmark” one specific part of a webpage
• With Diigo and Del.icio.us, every category (tags, sites) can be made into RSS feeds – It did not seem possible with Simplybox
• One can share with any user from Diigo and SimplyBox browser toolbar but it does not seem possible with del.icio.us

Differences

• Diigo allows “highlighting” and “sticky” notes in each web page while SimplyBox “captures” a section of the page. Del.icio.us does not have this function.
• Diigo allows creation of lists and groups while this is not possible with Del.icio.us (one can only make each bookmark private or public). With simplybox, sharing a box with another simplybox user makes the other user become part of that box.
• Diigo has sharing on group level, site level and tag level. Only tags and bookmarks can be shared in del.icio.us. In SimplyBox, sharing occurs at a captured box level with the ability to make it public
• For each group, Diigo has a central page with ability to enable a forum. SimplyBox allows users to make comment on each box. Del.icio.us operates on a message inbox that lets one know when one’s del.icio.us friend have shared a bookmark with us.

Do I still feel strongly about Diigo?

Yes

The main advantage of diigo I feel lies in it’s “group” functionality. It seems ideal for building learning communities and an extension to a real classroom. The ability to highlight and write sticky notes are such a natural extension of study habits that has become very common with students all over the world (in my limited view of the world I can this being usable on multiple levels in e-learning as well as blended learning. Examples:

• Group research activity where students are given a specific topic to research on over the web. Students need to highlight the areas they feel are related and comment on how using sticky notes. A TA is assigned to lead the forum for this group and will comment on each resource found by the students. Students also need to comment on at least x number of classmates findings
• Building of a collaborative space on a specific field of research amongst different content experts and professionals in the field. It is then provided as an RSS feed for students who are taking a class in the topic.
• Identify one or two main resources (e.g. a translation of the main text for a literature course that is made available on the web). Give students a discussion essay topic on the text and ask them to each create their “space” by highlighting portions of the text and commenting on how they relate to essay topic.
• Also neat way to provide student feedback – see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYxw6qrWt14&NR=1

That’s all I can think of for now

1. Effortless way of finding learning resources on a particular topic, filter them and make them available to your students. The instructor could refine search terms in his RSS reader until he finds an appropriate number and list of resources for the course. He then asks his students to add this to their RSS reader – students then automatically updated with more resources and the instructor may even ask students to comment on some of these resources in relation to the topics being discussed in the class.
2. Many ideas and practical uses of RSS are provided in RSS Ideas for Educators. For example, in the course I am designing on Using Moodle tools to manage a course, I could find Moodle tutorials from video/screencast feeds and get my students to be automatically updated from them. The main fear that I have with RSS feeds, in general, specially in it’s uses as aggregation of websites, news and weblogs (RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators – pgs 6-10) is overwhelming the student with too much information and unable to focus the direction of learning. Personally, I would prefer to use RSS as a research tool that allows me to review information in different media and different sources in one location, filter them and selectively provide them to my students in my LMS or Blog.
   
3. As pointed out by Downes (Introduction to RSS feeds for educational designers), being able to syndicate a weblog distinguishes from a website (hence why several school sites have started using weblogs as their main site (RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators – pgs 20). One of the difficulties of online learning is the disconnect that can happen due to the fact that the student is often an adult learner having a full-time job and many other tasks to manage. If a weblog can be designed to act as the reminder and task list for the students such that it’s role is like a “coach”, the student can subscribe to this RSS through the student’s most effective mode of communication (For some it could be cell phone, others could be i-Pod, and others it could be online aggregator).
4. For a directed task like a group reseach project, I see RSS aggregation being useful – again here, I think that the instructor needs to provide an intial filter on which sources to aggregate from.
5. Overall, I see the advantages of RSS being more “personal” for the instructor’s effectiveness of managing, filtering, keeping up-to-date with the huge amount of information available on the web.
   

That’s all for now

1. I think Twitter would be very effective for delivering elearning on mobile devices. For example, if the target audience was professionals who are taking a course on an emerging field in their practice. We could deliver the core content as small downloadable audio files and at the end of each audio, we could have certain reflection questions to connect with their current practice that they “twit” on. Because they would be able to do this via sms, they might often have reflections whilst they are in their practice and hence would be able to reflect just in time via their cell phone. Furthermore, each student will be able to follow the reflections of other practitioners in the field and be able to extract valuable lessons through threads over time. Another potential benefit might be the building of a small community of practitioners that would continue even after the course.
2. For private micro-blogs:
   • The content is sensitive such as company research and development information, information about patients, etc.
   • Some students might feel hesitant in posting their personal reflections and musings if they know it will be public
   • Ethical considerations such as cross-culture and cross-gender are easier to deal with
3. Against private micro-blogs
   • The community can expand – one would be able to connect with other people who share similar experiences but are not part of the group or course. That would also potentially allow the community to keep the momentum after the course duration.
   • Allows for easier self-correction/moderation due to the “public” aspect
4. Micro-blogs usage: I had heard about twitter before but had never investigated more into it. I had always thought that it was another social tool like facebook where people go and socialize, gossip and “waste their time” I can see now that if used within a certain structure and with clear goals and policies, it can be quite effective for collaborative projects and assignments and building of a post-course learning community.

Hi everyone

I’ve been wondering for some time whether blogs could be used as an alternative to an LMS for a certain kind of course. With the soffistication of tools like wordpress where one can easily add any kind of digital media to a post, and further, the user experience on view/playback is also quite rich, that becomes quite attractive because often, a core aspect of many online courses is digital media delivered at a certain pace.

From that aspect, I find a blog much easier to use (both from management and ease of use for student) compared to an LMS like Moodle, and actually even more soffisticated tools like WebCT (I have used up to WebCT Vista)

However, LMS provide assessment tools like assignment and quizzes as well as tracking submission and grades that I have not seen Blogs could provide (unless a soffistacted plug-in exists out there)

Hence, for courses where assignment and tracking is not so important, I think Blogs could be very effective. The ideal, for me is being able to combine and integrate tools where they can best be used. So for example, if I could use wordpress for a project work where students can provide their work in different kinds of multimedia and other students can post on each work, and then integrate that in Moodle where I can use it’s grading feature, that would be something

Random ramblings for now…

Ismael