I just tucked my daughter in for nap time with some warm milk and a Dr. Seuss. His wild and wacky way with words always gets me inspired (as you might have already guessed from the title of my blog).
Today, I started experimenting with Diigo's ability to highlight, sticky-note, comment and share annotated links. I quickly discovered that one can do a lot more with the Diigo toolbar than the Diigolet button I had previously added to my toolbar. So, I downloaded a very quick plug-in for Firefox and I was off and running.
Trying out Features
First, I experimented with the Highlight and Sticky Note feature to post some reminders to myself on a blog post I found about using Evernote. Then, I discovered that I can use Diigo to create a special URL to share that blog post along with my highlights and sticky notes: Here it is!
The Diigo T
oolbar also has a sidebar feature that allows you to create a general comment on a website that will appear in your Diigo library or in a Diigo group. The Diigo toolbar also has a screen capture tool that will save just clips of a website to your Diigo library. Overall, the Diigo toolbar has a lot to offer!The more I experiment with Diigo the more I think about how it is a tool that can support my various roles:
- As a graduate student to organize and collaborate on research
- As a teacher to share information with my students (especially when I want to draw attention to a particular aspect of a website) and also between students on shared projects
- For personal interest (eg. to save my comments on recipes, etc.)
Berger and Trexler (2010) prefer Diigo in the classroom to other social bookmarking services as it "has distinctive features that support active learning" because "it allow the students to mark up Web pages as they would a paperback book--with sticky notes, highlights, and comments--and then share those notes with others" (p. 57). Diigo's ability to allow students to engage their reading with opinions, comments and questions is key.
When the idea of sharing and commenting on each other's research using Diigo was put to the test in an English classroom, teacher-librarian Deborah Gottsleben-Delaney (2010) noted that "[i]t really didn't matter if one student found an excellent website. The conversation that surrounded that source became a lesson in itself" (pg. 14). I could imagine this would be particularly useful when critiquing the validity of websites, etc.
I'm excited to put social bookmarking, as well as highlighting/commenting to more use both as a learner and as a teacher!
References
Berger, P., & Trexler, S. (2010). Choosing web 2.0 tools for learning and teaching in a digital world. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.
Gottsleben-Delaney, D.. (2010, December). I Go, You Go: Why You Should Use Diigo. School Librarian's Workshop: New Year Issue, 31(3), 14. Retrieved November 11, 2011, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 2237906941).
Thank you very much for this post! I am a teacher and a teacher librarian, and I can't seem to decide which tool to use. Of course, I can use both -- and whenever I feel like I'm going to go entirely toward Evernote, I get sentimental about Diigo and understand its superiority in a number of areas, specifically with annotation.
ReplyDeleteI also tend to use Evernote for my personal life and Diigo for my academic/professional, but another thing that I'm learning is that a lot of it depends on my workflow and the capabilities of the different services.
For example, Diigo hasn't been focusing as much on mobile, and I find myself moving articles and bookmarks while reading on my phone (usually with Pocket). Yes, Diigo has a phone app, but it's not very good (at least not on Android), so that means that I am moving toward Evernote.
But I'd much rather share academic articles with my colleagues when they're annotated, and I prefer Diigo's feature of being able to do a search and then share a list of links via email (to those who don't have a Diigo account).
Sorry for all the rambling, but I am wondering what your ideas are about this. Thank you very much!
Hi there! Sorry it's taken me a few days to reply to your comment - we've been on vacation. I should have premised my post with the fact that I'm not using a smartphone for Diigo; I occasionally use my husband's iphone to access Evernote.
ReplyDeleteAs the months have gone by, I find myself using Evernote very much as a personal notetaking device. I rarely web clip into it because I find it much slower than just bookmarking with Diigo. I'll read your next post and respond more there.