Diving Deeper into Diigo

So you see! There's no end to the things you might know, depending on how far beyond Zebra you go! --Dr. Seuss

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 Toolbar 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.)

A Closer Look at Classroom Use

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).

Have a playdate with your bookmarks!

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. --Thomas Jefferson

We've been bookmarking sites for a long time with our browsers, and now we are using services like Diigo to do it so we can access the bookmarks at any computer. But how do I make bookmarking social? What does this mean, anyways?

Berger and Trexler (2010) define social bookmarking as "the ability to share what you find with others and see what they have "tagged" perceiving additional uses" (p. 53). This video from the Common Craft Show explains social bookmarking beautifully (even though it happens to use the tool Delicious rather than Diigo):

Up until now, I have been bookmarking, and I have been tagging, but I have not looked at the social aspect of it. In Diigo, you can choose to follow certain people, and thus, their bookmarks and tags. I did a Diigo search for friends with my Google account and it turns out that two people I know use Diigo, so I sent invitations. (Suddenly, I am having a flashback to trying to find contacts on Goodreads. In real life, I actually do have friends...honestly.)

Another way to utilize the social aspect of bookmarking at Diigo is to use the Group feature. This post on Learn it in 5 provides a great overview of how to use Diigo Groups. I have applied to a popular group called "Diigo in Education" to see what that will yield.

I can definitely see the benefits of setting up groups for classes, and in this way I could easily share numerous relevant websites (with comments and sticky notes) for research or projects. A school could set up a group to share valuable educational websites with teachers and teachers could then share comments about them. Oh, the Pro-D possibilities! My head is spinning.

References

Barnes, M. (n.d.). Diigo Groups. Learn it in 5: how-to videos for the technology classroom. Retrieved from http://learnitin5.com/Diigo-Groups

Berger, P., & Trexler, S. (2010). Choosing web 2.0 tools for learning and teaching in a digital world. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Lefever, L. (2009, March 18). Social bookmarking in plain English, for the rest of us [Video file]. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/HeBmvDpVbWc

Diigo vs. Evernote: The Showdown

To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time. --Leonard Bernstein

Time to revise my plan! I was feeling bogged down this week trying to tackle both Diigo and Evernote at the same time. I didn't know where to start, so I'm going to slow the pace down and focus more on Diigo this week, and more on Evernote next week.

I've worked with both tools enough to know that there is crossover between what they can do:

• Both can act as internet "collectors". (With Evernote, you clip a webpage or just the URL, whereas with Diigo, you bookmark it.)
  
• Both use tags to organize your information.
  
• Both are searchable.
  
• Both allow you to share content with others.
  
• Both tools would be useful in the classroom for teachers and students alike

However, I am leaning towards using Diigo as a internet research management tool, while using Evernote more as a personal management tool. Why?

• Diigolet is an easy tool to quickly bookmark a page with tags and move on.
  
• Diigo serves as a vast resource center for sharing and commenting on research
  
• Evernote's notebook feature allows to you categorize many aspects of life/work
  
• Evernote has the ability to keep personal notes, photos, and voice memos unattached to websites
  

This post helped me organize my thoughts about Diigo and Evernote. Well, there is a lot to tackle for both tools, so on with Diigo!

References

Ebersole, Ray. (2010, December 23). Evernote vs. diigo - a replacement for Delicious? [web log post]. Retrieved from http://edutechation.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/evernote-vs-diigo-a-replacement-for-delicious/

Web Tools #5: Evernote & Diigo

Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up. --A.A. Milne

Organizing material in the age of information is a learning process that requires some management tools. Wurman reports that “a weekly edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England” (as cited in Berger & Trexler, 2010, p. 70). Berger and Trexler discuss the problem of information overload, stating that it occurs when a person is unable to locate and make use of the information that one needs (p. 71). Here is where a social bookmarking tool like Diigo, or an archiving tool like Evernote become very useful. They both are tools that I have started to use at home and at school and this blog post on the Unquiet Librarian (Hamilton, 2010) confirms they are both being used regularly by students.

I plan to start my two week focus on Evernote and Diigo with a compare and contrast of the two tools for both personal and school-based use. In the second week, I will focus more closely on Evernote, as it is the tool I have used less, by using the various options within Evernote to do an inspirational project, such as developing a notebook of future travel dreams. I have purposely chosen a fun project here to see how students could use the program to be creative.

References

Berger, P., & Trexler, S. (2010). Choosing web 2.0 tools for learning and teaching in a digital world. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Hamilton, B. (2010, August 6). Students give Evernote and Diigo the thumbs up [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://theunquietlibrary.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/students-give-evernote-and-diigo-the-thumbs-up/