This document provides instructions for a lesson on digital annotation using Diigo. The lesson is intended to improve students' reading skills and last approximately one class period. Students will set up Diigo accounts, read and annotate a text by highlighting important information and adding sticky notes with questions, related knowledge, opinions, and a summary including the author's purpose. Then students will evaluate a classmate's annotations using an evaluation form before returning to improve their own annotations based on the feedback. The teacher can assess the lesson through student completion of peer evaluations or by grading individual student annotations within private accounts or collaborative class groups on Diigo.

1. Meghan Stigge, School Librarian
Piper High School
http://mstigge.wordpress.com/
Digital Annotation Using Diigo
As always, adjustments can be made to any segment to better fit the
classroom time you have for the lesson.
Media and content standards: (choose ‘learning services’ and ‘curriculum documents’ when following links)
Media Standards 1- Information Literacy
2- Independent Learning
3- Social Responsibility
4- Technology Literacy
Content Standards Rather than listing content standards, this lesson applies to the building goal of
improving reading performance
Class Period Time Required:
*This lesson assumes prior instruction on how to annotate.
Approximately 1 block period, depending on how long the practice article is
Step by Step:
1. Librarian will explain what Diigo is and what we will be using it for (improving reading skills)
2. Students will walk through account setup with Librarian (approx. 15 min.) or will log in
using account created by teacher
3. Students will set up Diigolet with Librarian (approx. 5 min.)
4. Students will read, highlight, and annotate a piece of digital text (personal or teacher’s choice)
doing the following things: (approx. 30 min., depending on length of text)
a. Highlight vital pieces of information
b. Sticky notes of probing questions
c. Sticky notes of related knowledge
d. Sticky notes of opinion
Optional extension e. Sticky notes of summary including the author’s purpose in the article
5. Students will switch seats and evaluate that student’s annotations using attached form
(approx. 20 min.)
6. Students will return to their own annotation and use the evaluation to add things missed
according to the evaluation. (approx. 15 min.)
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2. Practice:
Individual practice occurs during steps 4, 5, and 6.
Assessment:
Classroom teacher’s choice on how to assess and assign credit. Possible methods:
1. Student receives completion credit for the evaluation step of another’s work
2. If student accounts are created via the educator’s upgrade and students make their
annotations private, the teacher could grade each student’s annotations.
3. If teacher wishes, highlighting and notes can be collaborative in nature using the
educator’s upgrade. You could then grade the individual annotations added by each
student. Teachers can create class groups, giving individual students accounts without
requiring email addresses. That way, annotations can serve as facilitating a digital classroom
conversation about the text. (Also, that would allow teacher to assign points based on
individuals’ annotative contributions.)
*This would eliminate steps 5 and 6 above but the evaluation would come from the
developing annotative conversation
*So, students can either create individual accounts using their own email addresses, or
teachers can create accounts for students (no email address required), that the teacher
can use to manage classes and assign specific articles for reading. Please see
http://mstigge.wordpress.com/ to see what this looks like.
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3. Digital Annotation Evaluation
Dear student, you are about to be bestowed with a great honor and responsibility: you
are about to help another student improve their reading skills. (Hear the drums roll.)
Please examine your partner’s highlighted passages and sticky notes (read all of them)
and specifically answer these questions:
Your name: ____________________ Original annotater: ________________
1. Did the original annotater select vital pieces of text to highlight or just splash
some pretty color on random/irrelevant pieces of text? (circle one)
Vital stuff Random/irrelevant stuff
Give one example and explain why it is vital: ________________________
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
2. Did the student ask probing questions? _______ How many? ________
3. Did the student have sticky notes of related knowledge?
Example: _________________________________________________
4. Did the student have sticky notes of opinion?
Example: _________________________________________________
5. Is there a summary sticky note? ______ Did it include author’s purpose? ___
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