I found diigo both interesting and frustrating to use. Once I got the hang of things, it was really pretty simple to use; however, getting the steps down was a little difficult. It was frustrating when I had to sign in repeatedly in order to get into a group. In addition, the highlighting tool was sometimes a little tricky to manipulate. I also noticed in annotations that when the highlighting tool didn't work correctly, your annotations were repeated over and over again.
I do feel like this tool could be easily incorporated into research and notetaking for students and would be something that they would probably master much easier than I did. Overall, I feel that I will use it again and I will eventually use it as a research tool in the media center. I, however, need to get more adept at it in order to use it as a learning tool.
I really like diigo. I think it's simple to use and love that I can keep track of everything I find online in one place and can even save comments about those pages/sites. I think the groups are cool way for people to share sites they've found and information they think is also important to share. In general, I don't do much bookmarking, even though I should. I am constantly surfing the internet and coming across interesting and useful sites but never keep track of them in one place. Diigo makes it so easy, I think I might change my bookmarking practices. I love the highlighting feature because there are times I might save a site but not remember why or what about it I found interesting. I had a small issue with the notes - I wanted to add a note to a recipe and had already put a note on the line above it, and every time I would try to put the new note up, it would just bring up the one I had already made. I ended up adding a 'floating' sticky note instead of a regular sticky note, but this is not what I really wanted to do. That was really the only frustration for me with diigo. I think this is a great tool for education and libraries. It's a good way for educators to let students share relevant information and students in turn can share with the rest of their class sites they have found on their own.
Bookmarking tools are indispensable for retrieving and organizing websites. Primarily I use the "Favorites" option of my browser's toolbar. As a teen librarian I am constantly compiling resources for activities, programs, book reviews, blogs, and etcetera. Additionally, I often bookmark specific pages within a site for easy access. This was my first introduction to Diigo as a bookmarking tool. I like the fact that you can access your bookmarks on various computers if you download the toolbar on each. The collaborative features are also great for work or teaching. While reading, I gain more from highlighting passages; however, there are times that I do not have access to a printer. By using Diigo I can engage fully with articles by virtually highlighting and making notes.
Still, I encountered several frustrating aspects of Diigo that decreased its value. I created several lists to categorize my bookmarks. However, I had to sign out of and back into Diigo before I was able to add pages to the lists. Also, I could not move a page to a list-I had to delete the bookmark and then add it again in order to place it within a list. I find it cumbersome that if you highlight or make notes they are displayed underneath the link in My Library. This makes it necessary to scroll down the page to get to other bookmarks and creates a distracting layout. I also experienced difficulty placing links to my bookmarks in the activity/discussion forums. When I asked for an annotated link I could not copy the link directly into the message box. I had to copy the link into a WORD document, recopy the link and then paste it into the message. This was the only way I could get an active hyperlink to appear in any of my messages. As a result it was very time consuming to write and post a message with a few links.
I like the concept of Diigo. However, I feel that there are several improvements that need to be made in order to make it an efficient and effective tool. I may continue to use Diigo for its highlighting features; however, I will continue to utilize my browser's "Favorites" bookmarking tools on a daily basis.
Working with Diigo was very interesting and at times a little frustrated. It took me awhile to get the hang of bookmarking, but now that I worked with it, it really is fun. I was bounced out of Diigo several times, and would have to keep rewriting my copy. The highlighting feature is great, I wish I had it when I was in high school and undergrad. I do not know if I will use it all that much, I tend to rely on the browser bookmarking system. As far as using this in teaching I think it would be wonderful. Having the students review poetry like we did and going in and making comments or highlighting would be a great teaching tool. Teaching the students early on about Diigo would definitely be worthwhile for their research and for sharing information in groups. For library use forming groups with other media specialists would be beneficial. I find I have to limit myself to a couple of tools like this and stick with them because I just do not have the time to keep up.
This project made me crazy! I guess my biggest problem is that I am not familiar with Diigo, and I wanted it to be simple, which it probably is, but I think I made it harder than it had to be.
I was frustrated because I had multiple screens open and I had to keep flipping back and forth between them. I do see the value of the program as a teaching tool, but perhaps I need to spend a little more time as the student before I tried teaching it to anyone else. A couple of other people have mentioned the signing in and out thing, and I also found that really annoying.
I am curious if anyone downloaded the toolbar, as recommended in the first few steps of sign up. My husband happened to be nearby when the option popped up and his response was "absolutely not". Since it is his laptop, and I did not want to be banished to the basement to work on my desktop, I gave in, and completed the projects without the toolbar. I am wondering how much of an impact this decision had on my frustration level.
I do like to try new things, but I think diigo will be a one time experience for me. My traditional browser bookmarks are working just fine for now.
My Diigo experience was just okay. The group experience went better than my individual one. I was happy to try it out, for I like anything that can keep me organized. There are so many websites that I come across that I know I'll want to visit again. Right now, I have everything organized into folders on my bookmarks bar (I use Safari), which I love.
When I got started with Diigo, I first downloaded the toolbar. I think this made things a lot easier - whenever I found a page I wanted to highlight or take notes on, I simply had to click that, and all of the needed tools dropped down. The highlighter tool was actually the most frustrating part of Diigo for me. I had trouble figuring out where to position it to highlight what I wanted...just when I thought I figured it out, it would highlight the wrong text. The other aspect of Diigo that gave me some issues was figuring out how to make notes public or private. When I highlighted something, and added a note, it was private. The only way I could figure out how to make it public was to actually go into my Diigo account, to My Library, then to each annotation where I could made notes private/public. I'm sure there was an easier way, I just got frustrated. Other than those troubles, I experimented with making a list, and was able to get through that okay. Contributing to the groups was pretty easy - it was simple enough to post a reply or new topic. I enjoyed this part of the project a lot more - it was interesting to look at people's topics and think of how I could contribute to them.
Overall, I wish more aspects of Diigo would have been a little more intuitive - I had to do more stumbling than I would have liked to. And for me, taking little notes on websites isn't something I really want or need to do. Bookmarking a page is enough for me, and doing that on Safari works great. I could see more how groups would benefit from Diigo. It would be a great tool for members to be able to share notes on specific aspects of sites, without having to try and explain it in an e-mail. Diigo would be useful for library groups of all kinds, especially when members can't get to the library.
I found my Diigo experience to be both helpful and frustrating. However, the experience seemed to improve the more I played around with it.
I really like how I can store all my bookmarks and annotations in one place, and how I can sort these entries by adding tags. However, I sometimes found it hard to share my findings on the class forum. I really didn't like how I had to have two tabs open on Firefox (one to my library and one to the group page) just so I could access my Diigo pages. I really enjoyed the highlighting tool, but the sticky note aspect of the site is annoying because I now see public sticky notes on every website I visit! On a related note, does anybody know how to get rid of this?
I really enjoyed contributing to the Get Cooking group (mine's under lunchtime ideas...it's the healthy chicken wrap recipe). This site would be especially useful for users wanting to connect with others that have similar interests and wishing to share online places of interest/information with that particular group.
In closing, I like Diigo and I would probably use it again, but I would enjoy it more if some features (i.e. highlighting, easier posting of multiple pages to a group) were improved.
I think Diigo is an interesting tool to use... especially for research and sharing. I had a few problems and annoyances with it, though. I see public sticky notes on every website I visit. I disabled this through the sticky notes "options," but they keep coming back. I wish there was an option on these forums to insert links from my library. Overall, though, I had a good experience. I usually have a notebook next to my computer for notes I want to take, especially with recipe or craft sites. Adding notes on the website itself makes it a lot easier.
Contributing and collaborating with others is a key component to teaching and learning, and Diigo allows you to do this. It also has quite a bit of organizational features that help keep websites together or separate.
My Experience with Diigo. I liked using Diigo for highlighting and sharing. I did download the tool bar and it didn't seem to mess anything up on my new laptop. I am always worried about letting a site change settings on my computer. I liked being able to share my Christmas websites with my fellow teachers. We are planning a big unit and this helped me highlight what I wanted them to focus on. It was much better than me sending them individual links one by one or even sending a list of sites to open. This way they had a description along with the snapshot of the page. If they visit my Diigo site they can see my comments and sticky notes. I think it will help them and save time since I have already previewed the sites and found the most important information for our purposes. I liked using Diigo since it didn't involve loading a bunch of bookmarks onto my computer. Now they have tags and explanations and it didn't take any longer than the old way of saving sites.
I thought Diigo was a cool idea, but I can't see myself using it much. Since I installed the toolbar, I've been getting security warnings on almost every site I go to, I don't know if that's related, and having so many pages open at once made my computer sloooooow. I don't usually use any computer but my own, so I just bookmark sites with my Favorites button. I can see how it would be useful to be able to take your bookmarks with you though. The highlighting and annotating was fun, I could really save a lot of paper and printer ink by taking notes on articles online. Overall, this assignment was fun in that I got to just sit down and have fun using the internet. I visited some pages for my favorite authors--that would be a good use of the sharing feature if I had a blog, personal or library-related.
I actually agree with the majority of people so far. I also found Diigo both interesting and frustrating. I did not install the toolbar, since I'm pretty vehemently opposed to installing toolbars and most widget-type things. It would have been a better experience for me if there had been a way to use Diigo without even using the Digolet, but if there was, I couldn't find it. I also do like the idea of being able to take quickie notes right on the website, but as so many websites change the pages regularly, it may not be useful for the long haul.
One thing I wish that they'd add is a way to post messages to groups even if you're not a member. It would be fine if a system were in place where the group moderator had to approve the post, but it would have been nice to be able to simply make a post to a group or two without having to become a member of the group.
After using this high tech tool, I now know why I enjoy this class so much. Not only are there activities to do, but they have helped me to explore the tool I'm required to use in class. After I'm finished with the tool, I evaluate it to see whether or not I would use it again. Diigo is one of those tools that you form a love hate relationship with. For example, it was tough getting the hang of what the tool was all about. I did not like that I had to install it on my computer in order to use it (I couldn't figure out another way to use it without having to install it). This is also another tool that requires a password (I'm passworded out, but they are a necessary evil). I loved the fact that it made sharing information quick and easy. I was able to highlight, stick a note with it and share it. Voila! I also enjoyed the group setting. I know blogs are a popular way to share things within a group, but I think Diigo made the experience less awkward. Overall, if I was looking at starting an online group, I would use Diigo as my first choice. However, personally I don't know if I would use the sticky note feature. Maybe when I graduate, I will go back through my high tech classes and make note of the things I didn't get to try. Who knows!
Honestly, I can't say that I'm all that impressed. The user interface is clunky and difficult to navigate through - it takes a lot of clicks to get between different parts of the site and to retrieve links to the annotated versions. I don't like that it wants to install a toolbar - the Diigolet isn't too bad, but I despise most full toolbars. Also, the sticky notes didn't seem to always end up where I wanted, and it didn't highlight correctly unless I pre-selected the area I wanted highlighted. I'm also not sure that the defaults for the groups should be so restrictive - I made sure to set mine to open, but as I write this I'm waiting for approval to post something to a peer's group. I understand why there are private settings, but I think for a collaborative tool they should default to a more open setting.
The one thing that I found useful was the highlighting and commenting function. I think this could be useful, especially for sharing with other people. Still, it's not really something I would use all that much in normal life. I'll definitely be sticking with Delicious for the foreseeable future.
I said some of these things in the experiment portion of the group, but one of my big problems is the idea that I have to download a toolbar for functionality (I'm very pleased that Tonya shares in my disdain for toolbars). The Diigolet is nice, but it's slow and seems to require double clicking on occasions where it's not supposed to be warranted. Your bookmarks get muddled very quickly when you add new things, which forces you to create groups of bookmarks, lest you be searching for hours for a link. After working with it for a few hours, it's nice, but it needs to have some more tweaking to feel really useful. One thing I hated was when making a group where you want to share links and to ask questions, it constantly updates it and make it less user-friendly to work through. I wish it would allow for choosing as to the order of items. Maybe I missed something on the site, but I wanted to put the general links at the bottom of the group, for people to look through, and then have the questions at the top, and it ended up being a huge hassle to do so. Also; the amount of work it takes to put a link into a response seems to be a little overwhelming: add bookmark, don't share to group because it will just put it up on the front page of the group where you don't really want it because you want to put it within your reply, go back to your library, click share then get annotated link, go back to group page where your reply is, copy and paste link so they can see your annotations and stick notes. It seems like a lot of work that should be able to be bypassed.
I doubt I would use this, as is, in my every day life. It's a good start, but it definitely needs tweaking.
Overall, I had a positive experience with this assignment. Diigo was quite easy to use after downloading the toolbar (I didn't realize I could say no to that option) and I didn't really have any difficulties. I like that I could create a brief description of each site I choose to bookmark, as so often I create a bookmark, don't use it and then wonder about its value to me months down the road.
I am a bit lazy, though, as I'd rather simply use the bookmarks or favorites feature on my browser's toolbar to collect my favorite links, than have to go to the Diigo site, find my library, then scroll through all of my links to find the one I want. I will more than likely not use this as a bookmarking tool for my personal use because of this. I can, however, see how it would be useful to someone performing research, as they could easily collect all of their research in one place, take notes at each of their chosen sites, and create a description as to why the site was useful.
I found Diigo to be easy to use, fun, and pretty useful! The tagging option is great, and I like that there is the option to create or join groups. This is another fun way to social network. It's also neat that multiple people can potentially comment on your sticky notes.
I think the format of the "My Library" section could be streamlined a bit. I guess it appears a little cluttered to me. Maybe if only the title and description of a bookmark were posted on the list and then when you click on it you can see the highlights and the sticky notes rather than seeing it all at once? I also found that occasionally I had issues with multiple pull down menus getting stuck while I was using Diigo. They would freeze while pulled down. I don't know how this happened. I fixed it by either logging out and back in or refreshing.
Overall, I think this is a great tool and I will probably use it in the future!
started by Annette Lamb on 31 Jul 09
Contribute to an activity designed by a classmate.
Then, share your experiences and thoughts here.
Click REPLY to add your ideas.
I do feel like this tool could be easily incorporated into research and notetaking for students and would be something that they would probably master much easier than I did. Overall, I feel that I will use it again and I will eventually use it as a research tool in the media center. I, however, need to get more adept at it in order to use it as a learning tool.
I love the highlighting feature because there are times I might save a site but not remember why or what about it I found interesting. I had a small issue with the notes - I wanted to add a note to a recipe and had already put a note on the line above it, and every time I would try to put the new note up, it would just bring up the one I had already made. I ended up adding a 'floating' sticky note instead of a regular sticky note, but this is not what I really wanted to do. That was really the only frustration for me with diigo.
I think this is a great tool for education and libraries. It's a good way for educators to let students share relevant information and students in turn can share with the rest of their class sites they have found on their own.
Still, I encountered several frustrating aspects of Diigo that decreased its value. I created several lists to categorize my bookmarks. However, I had to sign out of and back into Diigo before I was able to add pages to the lists. Also, I could not move a page to a list-I had to delete the bookmark and then add it again in order to place it within a list. I find it cumbersome that if you highlight or make notes they are displayed underneath the link in My Library. This makes it necessary to scroll down the page to get to other bookmarks and creates a distracting layout. I also experienced difficulty placing links to my bookmarks in the activity/discussion forums. When I asked for an annotated link I could not copy the link directly into the message box. I had to copy the link into a WORD document, recopy the link and then paste it into the message. This was the only way I could get an active hyperlink to appear in any of my messages. As a result it was very time consuming to write and post a message with a few links.
I like the concept of Diigo. However, I feel that there are several improvements that need to be made in order to make it an efficient and effective tool. I may continue to use Diigo for its highlighting features; however, I will continue to utilize my browser's "Favorites" bookmarking tools on a daily basis.
As far as using this in teaching I think it would be wonderful. Having the students review poetry like we did and going in and making comments or highlighting would be a great teaching tool. Teaching the students early on about Diigo would definitely be worthwhile for their research and for sharing information in groups. For library use forming groups with other media specialists would be beneficial. I find I have to limit myself to a couple of tools like this and stick with them because I just do not have the time to keep up.
I was frustrated because I had multiple screens open and I had to keep flipping back and forth between them. I do see the value of the program as a teaching tool, but perhaps I need to spend a little more time as the student before I tried teaching it to anyone else. A couple of other people have mentioned the signing in and out thing, and I also found that really annoying.
I am curious if anyone downloaded the toolbar, as recommended in the first few steps of sign up. My husband happened to be nearby when the option popped up and his response was "absolutely not". Since it is his laptop, and I did not want to be banished to the basement to work on my desktop, I gave in, and completed the projects without the toolbar. I am wondering how much of an impact this decision had on my frustration level.
I do like to try new things, but I think diigo will be a one time experience for me. My traditional browser bookmarks are working just fine for now.
When I got started with Diigo, I first downloaded the toolbar. I think this made things a lot easier - whenever I found a page I wanted to highlight or take notes on, I simply had to click that, and all of the needed tools dropped down. The highlighter tool was actually the most frustrating part of Diigo for me. I had trouble figuring out where to position it to highlight what I wanted...just when I thought I figured it out, it would highlight the wrong text. The other aspect of Diigo that gave me some issues was figuring out how to make notes public or private. When I highlighted something, and added a note, it was private. The only way I could figure out how to make it public was to actually go into my Diigo account, to My Library, then to each annotation where I could made notes private/public. I'm sure there was an easier way, I just got frustrated. Other than those troubles, I experimented with making a list, and was able to get through that okay. Contributing to the groups was pretty easy - it was simple enough to post a reply or new topic. I enjoyed this part of the project a lot more - it was interesting to look at people's topics and think of how I could contribute to them.
Overall, I wish more aspects of Diigo would have been a little more intuitive - I had to do more stumbling than I would have liked to. And for me, taking little notes on websites isn't something I really want or need to do. Bookmarking a page is enough for me, and doing that on Safari works great. I could see more how groups would benefit from Diigo. It would be a great tool for members to be able to share notes on specific aspects of sites, without having to try and explain it in an e-mail. Diigo would be useful for library groups of all kinds, especially when members can't get to the library.
I really like how I can store all my bookmarks and annotations in one place, and how I can sort these entries by adding tags. However, I sometimes found it hard to share my findings on the class forum. I really didn't like how I had to have two tabs open on Firefox (one to my library and one to the group page) just so I could access my Diigo pages. I really enjoyed the highlighting tool, but the sticky note aspect of the site is annoying because I now see public sticky notes on every website I visit! On a related note, does anybody know how to get rid of this?
I really enjoyed contributing to the Get Cooking group (mine's under lunchtime ideas...it's the healthy chicken wrap recipe). This site would be especially useful for users wanting to connect with others that have similar interests and wishing to share online places of interest/information with that particular group.
In closing, I like Diigo and I would probably use it again, but I would enjoy it more if some features (i.e. highlighting, easier posting of multiple pages to a group) were improved.
Contributing and collaborating with others is a key component to teaching and learning, and Diigo allows you to do this. It also has quite a bit of organizational features that help keep websites together or separate.
I liked using Diigo for highlighting and sharing. I did download the tool bar and it didn't seem to mess anything up on my new laptop. I am always worried about letting a site change settings on my computer. I liked being able to share my Christmas websites with my fellow teachers. We are planning a big unit and this helped me highlight what I wanted them to focus on. It was much better than me sending them individual links one by one or even sending a list of sites to open. This way they had a description along with the snapshot of the page. If they visit my Diigo site they can see my comments and sticky notes. I think it will help them and save time since I have already previewed the sites and found the most important information for our purposes.
I liked using Diigo since it didn't involve loading a bunch of bookmarks onto my computer. Now they have tags and explanations and it didn't take any longer than the old way of saving sites.
One thing I wish that they'd add is a way to post messages to groups even if you're not a member. It would be fine if a system were in place where the group moderator had to approve the post, but it would have been nice to be able to simply make a post to a group or two without having to become a member of the group.
Overall, if I was looking at starting an online group, I would use Diigo as my first choice. However, personally I don't know if I would use the sticky note feature. Maybe when I graduate, I will go back through my high tech classes and make note of the things I didn't get to try. Who knows!
The one thing that I found useful was the highlighting and commenting function. I think this could be useful, especially for sharing with other people. Still, it's not really something I would use all that much in normal life. I'll definitely be sticking with Delicious for the foreseeable future.
After working with it for a few hours, it's nice, but it needs to have some more tweaking to feel really useful.
One thing I hated was when making a group where you want to share links and to ask questions, it constantly updates it and make it less user-friendly to work through. I wish it would allow for choosing as to the order of items. Maybe I missed something on the site, but I wanted to put the general links at the bottom of the group, for people to look through, and then have the questions at the top, and it ended up being a huge hassle to do so. Also; the amount of work it takes to put a link into a response seems to be a little overwhelming: add bookmark, don't share to group because it will just put it up on the front page of the group where you don't really want it because you want to put it within your reply, go back to your library, click share then get annotated link, go back to group page where your reply is, copy and paste link so they can see your annotations and stick notes. It seems like a lot of work that should be able to be bypassed.
I doubt I would use this, as is, in my every day life. It's a good start, but it definitely needs tweaking.
I am a bit lazy, though, as I'd rather simply use the bookmarks or favorites feature on my browser's toolbar to collect my favorite links, than have to go to the Diigo site, find my library, then scroll through all of my links to find the one I want. I will more than likely not use this as a bookmarking tool for my personal use because of this. I can, however, see how it would be useful to someone performing research, as they could easily collect all of their research in one place, take notes at each of their chosen sites, and create a description as to why the site was useful.
I think the format of the "My Library" section could be streamlined a bit. I guess it appears a little cluttered to me. Maybe if only the title and description of a bookmark were posted on the list and then when you click on it you can see the highlights and the sticky notes rather than seeing it all at once? I also found that occasionally I had issues with multiple pull down menus getting stuck while I was using Diigo. They would freeze while pulled down. I don't know how this happened. I fixed it by either logging out and back in or refreshing.
Overall, I think this is a great tool and I will probably use it in the future!