Okay, I had a HUGE BREAKTHROUGH this weekend about using Diigo for my new Indian Epics UnTextbook as a browsing/discovery tool. One of the things I've been worrying about is how to help students choose what to read in the new Indian Epics UnTextbook, and I didn't really have a solution until I saw how I could use Diigo to do this. The idea is that the students will basically be making their own textbook, based on what they choose to read... and the range of things they can choose from is really huge. So, a big challenge I have is how to structure the course week by week so that the students are not feeling overwhelmed, but also so that they will feel adventurous in their choices. Here is the strategy that I have come up with in terms of introducing the epics and expanding the range of student choices as the semester progresses.
As you'll see, the Diigo items do not all have annotations yet, but they will by the time the semester starts! Here is how the my Diigo tags work:
IELibrary. These are all the available reading options.
Weeks. The weekly organization is crucial; for details, see below.
Weeks2-3 - Week4 - Weeks5-6 - Week7 - Weeks9-14
Topics. Overall, the course is focused on the two epics, with Krishna literature being an important part of that, but I am also including other Indian story traditions, esp. Buddhist literature (this was something I tried last year, and the students were very eager). Just as I singled out women authors, I've also singled out women as a topic focus (the students in my classes are predominantly women!). Combinations are also possible here, like Ramayana with a focus on women or Mahabharata with a focus on women.
t:Ramayana - t:Mahabharata - t:Krishna
t:gods - t:legends - t:Buddhism - t:women
Availability. Students do not need to buy any books for the class; everything is free — either free online or free on reserve in our school library (Bizzell). But for students who prefer to have a book in hand, the campus bookstore will have copies of the four books I traditionally used to teach the class, and I've also made an Amazon shopping list of books that are very affordable ($10 or less for either Kindle or printed book, and ultracheap for under $5).
free:online - free:Bizzell (along with links for specific Bizzell options)
buy:OUBookstore - buy:cheap (along with links for various cheap options)
Format/Style: Most of the materials are full-text books, but I am really excited that I have a couple of films to offer and a great selection of comic books and graphic novels:
f:film - f:graphic-novel
Also, I'm not sure how many students are interest in audio, but I love audiobooks myself, and I've marked the audio books that are available:
audio (along with links for specific audio options)
Another big issue for my students is the use of old-fashioned language, which predominates in the public domain materials. I've marked the items which use modern language, and also the children's books, along with the items that are poetry or plays.
s:modern - s:children - s:drama - s:poetry
Authors: Although the individual authors are probably not known to my students, I can imagine some students who might want to focus on women authors or on India authors... or Indian women authors!
authors:Indian
authors:women
Notes: For students who like to have my notes to help them as they read, I've marked the items with Reading Guides (and I'll be adding more of these Guides as I get a sense of which items are most popular and/or most in need of notes):
ReadingGuides
Here's how I will get the students used to Diigo:
ORIENTATION
Week 1: Orientation (I always have an orientation week in my online classes).
RAMAYANA Weeks 2-4
Weeks 2-3: Ramayana. As a first-time experience with the Ramayana, there are three reading options:
R. K. Narayan's modern retelling
PDE Ramayana anthology
two short versions: Monro and Gould
Because there are just three options to explain here, I don't need Diigo to help with that.
Week 4: More Ramayana. Here is where the range of choices widens up enough that I need Diigo to help. So, I can use this link for all the Week 4 options, which are one-week versions of the Ramayana to allow the students to experience the epic again but from a different angle:
Week 4
There are 11 items to choose from there as you can see. But I can also provide links to filter those choices based on the students' preferences:
Week 4 film
Week 4 graphic novels
Week 4 women as topic
Week 4 women authors
Week 4 Indian authors
Week 4 free online reading
Hopefully I can use Week 4 as a way to introduce them to Diigo and how it can be useful! Then, in the second half of the semester, when they will really need Diigo to navigate the options, it will already be somewhat familiar.
MAHABHARATA Weeks 5-7
Weeks 5-6: Mahabharata. As a first-time experience with the Mahabharata, there are three reading options:
R. K. Narayan's modern retelling
PDE Mahabharata anthology
two short versions: Monro and Wilson
Because there are just three options to explain here, I don't need Diigo to help with that. These options parallel the types of options available for the Ramayana, so students can decide if they made a good choice the first time (and make that same choice again if they want), or if they should try to a different reading option.
Week 7: More Mahabharata. Just like in Week 4, the range of choices widens up enough that I need Diigo to help. So, I can use this link for all the Week 7 options, which are one-week versions of the Mahabharata to allow the students to experience the epic again but from a different angle:
Week 7
Again, there are 11 items to choose from there. But I can also provide links to filter those choices based on the students' preferences:
Week 7 graphic novels
Week 7 women as topic
Week 7 women authors
Week 7 Indian authors
Week 7 free online reading
Week 7 will reinforce the use of Diigo that students will have seen already in Week 4!
WEEKS 9-14
Then, in the second half of the semester, Diigo becomes essential. For weeks 9-14, students have over 90 reading options, and it is free choice based on what each student is most interested in! Luckily, that all displays on one page of Diigo if you set to display 100 results per page.
Weeks 9-14 Ramayana
Weeks 9-14 Ramayana
Weeks 9-14 Mahabharata
Weeks 9-14 Krisha
Weeks 9-14 free online AND modern style
Weeks 9-14 graphic novels
Weeks 9-14 focus on women
Weeks 9-14 Indian authors
Weeks 9-14 film
Weeks 9-14 free online
Weeks 9-14 ultracheap books to buy
And of course there are many more combinations as mentioned above. If I can get the students used to building their own Diigo filters, they should be able to search very effectively!
Some Diigo tricks: You may have noticed some oddities in the way I do the Diigo tags so I thought I would explain here the strategies I'm using.
category term and colon. Diigo is very good about prompting you to autocomplete a tag once you start typing, so by grouping my tags into categories like topics (all the t: tags for example, and all the free: tags), Diigo provides good autocompletion.
compound terms. If it were just me using these items, I wouldn't do any of these compound tags (like buy:cheap-Kindle and buy:cheap-book); I would do those as separate data items (buy:cheap AND Kindle). Since my students are probably less likely to learn the taxonomy to create their own searches, it is a big advantage to have individual tag links which are clickable on the Diigo screen. So, for example, if they are looking at an entry and see that it has a single tag which is buy:cheap-Kindle, they can just click on that tag and see the results of that search.
camel case. I use camel case for a tag like ReadingGuide because, while Diigo does allow for spaces in tags, it requires quotation marks around tags with spaces in them, which always turns into a big headache if you forget the quotation marks.
