Design Diigo Wiki's and Whitman=System Failure

A funny thing happened just now. I felt overwhelmed with the amount of work for for tomorrow's class, so I decided to stop. And just blog about all of it, because I'm getting nowhere just sitting there staring at the screen trying to decide what it is Whitman is touching, and where.

I suppose I should start somewhere, and since I've prefaced this with my exhaustion for Whitman, I'll start there: I really love reading Leaves of Grass. I've never read this before, and I am really excited to explore this prose poem more. That being said, my frustrations with Diigo have made me a little reluctant to continue. Things started out simple enough, the Diigo toolbar worked properly, I was hilighting words and phrases successfully, and then all of a sudden my computer turns a funny shade of gray. I'm using Ubuntu, so when this happens, it usually isn't a good thing. Firefox crashes. I reboot. Happens again. And again. And again. I decide that loading the Whitman Archives page is not a good idea, so I temporarily avoid it. It seems to run better when I avoid pages with highlight-active-diigo pages. Like any responsible person, I retreat to G-Chat and rant my frustration out like a five year old to Joseph. While doing this, Ned messages me informing me that he is highlighting green. What is happening? I ask myself. After about the eighth episode reloading firefox, Diigo is working again, but extremely slowly. My OS has never run this slow before, and I'm blaming it on Diigo. As I slowly make my way through the poem, I realize I'm having a hard time reading the poem online because everything is becoming blurry. I don't have horrible eyesight, but anyone's eyes hurt after staring at a screen too long. I increase the font size on my page. Somewhat better.

And yet.

I'm having a hard time reading this much online. The sticky note boxes don't save your notes if you stray away from the page you are on (no use of tabbed browsing allowed, while posting a note). You can't increase the font size within the sticky notes. This is bad. I'm already forming these borderline violent reactions to Diigo, and yet simultaneously I feel extremely guilty. I'm sincerely trying to use the program, and I really love the idea of doing something like this: commenting on the web. But If the application is hindering my ability to successfully produce a coherent thought, then I don't really find any use in it. I've managed to read the poem online, and struggle through diigo's post-its without my eyeballs falling out, but it wasn't easy.

While I'm lashing out at technology, I should probably go ahead and diss the use of Wiki's. Again, don't get me wrong: the idea is an amazing one, and I'm trying my best not to be negative. Seriously. But judging from our classroom experience, and my own personal frustration, I really do not want to use the Wiki's again. I mean, I will use them if we are working on a group activity, but my greatest concern was how extremely unorganized everything was.
Now this leads me into my Backward Desgin Rant: If I had gone into the lab, better prepared for the activity as a group, then the assignment would have been fairly successful. The problem for our group, as Alden articulated quite well, stemmed from the fact that we had too many issues, ideas, and problems to hash out without the use of the computer, before we were ready to sit down and post our results, assessment, and design to the Wiki. So we went into the lab awkwardly arguing over iMacs, and making lame group names like TWFG (The Wiki Face Group). Even I barely remembered the name, because we were so wrapped up in everything else.
As for the design itself, the actual methodology behind backward design, I found this to be problematic yet worth further exploration. I want this to work, because this is a fantastical idea and approach to the standard format. That being said, I found the actual assignment extremely difficult. Once we finally had one vague result written down, I felt we were putting a Halloween mask on Forward design, and telling it to just be Backward design. It wasn't working for me. I have been in classes during my undergraduate in which this design worked well, and was fun and different; but perhaps at this stage in my life I am unable to create a compelling enough, and result focused design that is worthwhile. So maybe I just shouldn't be a teacher...but that discussion belongs in my other blog, not my class blog.