I began looking into social bookmarking as a way of getting organized in the Web 2.0 environment. I was wanting a way of managing my favourites, making them easier to find and retrieve. Social bookmarking offers this by sorting bookmarks by 'tags' - single keywords that I create - making them more "findable". It has the added benefit of being public (or private, if prefered) so that tagged sites can be shared with peers, students and parents. The big bonus of bookmarking socially is the access to well read, like-minded taggers and being able to view sites they've marked, which enriches my collection.
Teaching Today article offers some answers to why use social bookmarking in the classroom, primarily for management reasons (web-based storage of bookmarks), collaboration and news gathering. I see other great implications, especially in having a tool that gives students the potential to collaborate and share information with other classmates. Simply feeling more empowered, students will be motivated to contribute quality content that they know others will read.
This Educase Learning document from Joanne's "Trailfire" says it well:
"Social bookmarking creates a true web of resources and connections—
one that is not limited to individuals and their folders
but represents the interests and judgments of a
community of users."
In my search for a social bookmarking site, I decided to start with Diigo based on Richarson's recommendation, "...another one of my favourite tools on the Read/Write Web. Diigo is a tool that not only allows you to begin constructing your own little piece of the web, it's a way of organizing it for yourself and for those you are collaborating with." (p.91 of Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts)
My intention was to explore a few others but I got so entrenched in Diigo it was hard "diiging" out. Here's what I "dug" up...
Diigo was easy to sign on to and download their tool bar. This has several useful features, such as the ability to highlight passages you're reading, comment on them (privately or publicly) and send them to your blog for editing or posting. These features are unique to Diigo (Richardson p.92) and part of the reason why I chose to focus on this site.Another great features on Diigo is the video and slideshare introductory tutorials at the Diigo Help Center. Perfect for saving time and good visuals for newbie learners, such as myself. The following is one such video that also includes an explanation of social bookmarking:
Also, there's some informative user-generated tutorials (see below) that not only teaches what the acronym Diigo means (Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other Stuff) but offers some great links for using Diigo in an educational setting (eg. see p. 20 "Avatar links for students")
Dig Deeper with Diigo
"This is a comprehensive tutorial for using Diigo in educational settings"
Which brings me to another great feature, the Diigo Educator Account. Here, you can safely set up student group accounts for classroom use. (Student email addresses are optional when setting up the accounts and privacy features allow only teacher and classmate communication) Classes automatically are set up as a Diigo group that includes group bookmarks, annotations and forums. Great implications for a classroom use whether collaborative bookmarking on research links, discussing these links using annotations or evaluating student comments on these sites.
One more neat thing I discovered with Diigo is that I could embed a Diigo slideshow onto my blog (see widget on the left of this posting) where I can organize and share a list of some of my bookmarkings . (What I noticed is that my highlights and post-it annotations didn't show up on my slideshow sample, most likely something I'm doing wrong.) I can see using this much like a "Trailfire" where you could have a list of bookmarked sites for students to peruse.
So I'm signed on, playing with all the gadgets (including regularly referring to tutorials), finding that using the toolbar is a great way to organize and liking the collaborative nature (particularly seeing what others have marked!).
I was reading Liz B Davies, in the "Getting Started" tutorials on Diigo, and I should have been a little leery when she mentioned Diigo as being "delicious on steroids". I've had this feeling all along that delicious is probably more my style - straight forward, simple - but glad I've persisted with Diigo and looking forward to "diiging" in some more!
3 comments:
Jan,
So that's what the acronym stands for....wait I think I've forgotten it already (too much information overload this week!)
Being able to set up a Diigo site as a private class sharing space sounds inviting. I can see a class really working together to make it a great site and then they could share it with another class or their parents when ready. I also like the idea of being able to add comments which builds in an authentic audience experience.
Jo-Anne
Thanks, Jan. Your overview of diigo and the pros and cons of using this tool with kids in schools is great. I really like the fact that in diigo you can set up a class space...sounds like something most of us should be looking at for our students and teachers.
Joanne
Jan,
The Teaching Today article was interesting, thanks for posting that in your blog. Amazing to read that it approximately 3-4 million new websites are created each month. That is a staggering amount! Is there a point when enough is enough? We are quickly becoming burried in vast amounts of information.
carol t
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