Tutorial: Two Uses of Technology to Improve Literacy and Critical Thinking

I'm still thinking about that UCLA research saying "technology in the classroom damages literacy and critical thinking." I'm still thinking it's behind the times, in its framing of technology as "video games and TV," and its complete omission of the Web and the social media/Web 2.0 explosion over the last five years or so.

So I ranted - rationally, mind you - against it in the first post. Now I'm going to follow up with a demonstration of two examples showing how blind the UCLA research was to today's possibilities, how behind the times.

The following screencast tutorial should be useful for every reader and thinker who doesn't know about it. Students of all ages, it should rock your world; and teachers, throw a bit of imagination at it and it might transform your practice a bit.

Background:

In the past two+ years, I've read and bookmarked almost 3,500 websites that I wanted to keep. I've also highlighted the interesting passages on them, and written margin-notes about those highlights - all without printing the pages.

I've also put all 3,500 websites in a file cabinet - without printing them out - that I can access anywhere in the world that has an internet connection.

And I've placed each bookmarked site in multiple folders with individual labels, so I can see everything I've saved about, say, NCLB, or Creationism, or the Cold War, or stuff that made me laugh, on one online page.

It's easy, efficient, and turbo-effective literacy, research, and information management. It's unique to the Berners-Lee Age. Gutenberg would have loved it. Some high-profile "researchers" apparently know little of it.

Here's a screencast showing how easily you can do it too (and much more, but one thing at a time), using Diigo. It's made using Screencast-o-matic.com's free online service - which is also valuable for teaching. Think of applications for English Language Learners, special needs students, and visual/aural learners, for example.

If you find this valuable, and want more little tutorials like this, please tell me. It's encouraging to hear.
.