Dear Nelba,

This is exactly what I used to do at my school when I was in Brazil. I don't want to throw my ideas here because I really want to see what everybody has to say, but do you envision creating, for example, a group for your school in Diigo and showing educators how to bookmark and share stuff with each other through the group? For the past weeks, I've been amazed how much I've been learning from our the LearningwithComputers group bookmarks. Every day there's a treasure. So, I've been thinking about ways to disseminate this concept of sharing in the read/write web and thought that Diigo would be a good start for reluctant teachers as they can easily receive updates by mail and we could start by sending very relevant links and encouraging, at least, some to share. What do you think?

Nelba Quintana wrote:
> @Carla
> Very good question. I am in charge of the virtual environment at the school where I work. I am in charge of the website content and give advice to my colleagues on ICT matters. Actually, I am supposed to teach my colleages and students how to bookmark so this discussion will be very enriching to me.

Wow, Mary, I loved our Blogging4Educators webslides. The cool thing is that you don't need to spend any extra time to prepare them. They are already there. Did you know that you can make webslides for specific feeds as well as bookmarks?

Here's a fantastic tutorial http://help.diigo.com/How-To_Guide/WebSlides

Oh, and we can add a sound track to the Webslides, too.

As for students, you're right. It's visually appealing and we can direct them to specific sites.

I'm preparing a special webslide to show you here in some days, very soon! It's related to a post Michele Martin wrote about creating our personal e-portfolios using bookmarkings, so I'll show you what I came up with!

Thanks for being here with us.

Carla having fun in Boston

Mary Hillis wrote:
> Hi Carla and LwCers,
> The Webslides are really visually appealing and would be great for use with a class or for professional development.
>
> For use with a class, you could bookmark some sites you wanted students to take a look at and embed the Webslides widget on your class blog or site. The slideshow may be more attractive than a simple list of links, and may appeal especially to visual learners.
>
> For professional development, using the Webslides feature would be a nice way to showcase a project or to create a kind of portfolio. During the Blogging4Educators session that we co-moderated earlier this year, we created a lot of content on various sites. I bookmarked these sites, saved them to the list Blogging4Educators, and then looked at the webslides. It looks really professional, and is easy to share with others!
> http://slides.diigo.com/list/mhillis/blogging4educators
>
> Looking forward to hearing more great ideas about Webslides!!
>
> Mary
> Carla Arena wrote:
> > Share with us some uses you can think would be profitable and useful for the Webslides. Would you use it with a group of students or for Professional Development?
> >
> > We're eagerly waiting for your brilliant ideas and enriching contributions.

Hi, Lorena,

Great to see that you're a true early bird!

Thanks for sharing your views. In fact, you shared the essence of online bookmarking, its mobility power. You can take your favorite online resources wherever you are and easily access them. You also mentioned looking at your friends' bookmarks. This is where the social gets in. On the bookmarking platforms, we can really create very enriching networks of information, sharing and knowledge. Diigo is a great example!

As for tagging, this would be number one in my list. There are two aspects to it. First, add tags that are meaningful for you, for your private retrieval, and also tags that have been suggested by the group that will help others browse through the treasures you find online.

Let us keep sharing our findings here!

This is great. Lorena! In fact, we'll be officially starting digging Diigo on Monday with the learningwithcomputers group.

You're not mistaken, just an eager beaver, ready to start!


Maria Lorena Recio wrote:
> Hi Carla,
> I was checking my mails today and saw that you had done something about bookmarking, so I went for it before doing anything else. Sometimes if I don't tackle this as fast as possible I forget about them.
> It's great to see that I was not that mistaken! See you around, thanks for the great job you're doing.
> Lore

Dear Ana Maria,

I agree with you that Diigo has a powerful social feature that you easily connect to. You connect to others, their ideas, discussions and resources. The fact that you have the Forum, annotations can be appealing to groups like ours, as well as to the classroom. I really like Delicious, but now I'm a big fan of Diigo because of its connectivity.

susana canelo wrote:

> And in case you want to suggest some topic to your students you can suggest your own list of sites
Dear Sus,

That's what I do nowadays for my online course, for example. Every online resource we explore is bookmarked and shared with the group. I used to do that in delicious. Now, I'll have to see how to do that here. In delicious I could easily organize my tags in Weeks (bundling tags). Here, I think you can use the "lists" to organize your tags in a meaningful way to the group. I'll check that.


> At first try to use all the tools Diigo supports, maybe we could classify our bookmarks, not just a tagged collection .

There's an option for the administrator that he can decide to have a tag dictionary for the group, or let the group add the tags and these tags are suggested to the one sharing a link with the group. Here, I don't see the option of "lists", but they are available in your personal account.

camila sousa wrote:

> I have just started exploring the "bookmarking world" I first thought that my "favourites" would be enough for me until I have realised that sharing is everything!! So I started thinking that an online space would be great.... So here I am....

Dear Camila, I also thought for some time that I could just keep my "favorites" on my computer, but then I realized that in this digital world mobility is essential. My resources, my findings, my treasures need to be wherever I am. So, online, they need to be there for easy access wherever we are.
Nowadays, I've gone even further, I want the social aspect, the collective learning, so that's why we went for Diigo this month.

> A disadvantage I think are the messages I wouldn't like to read and they keep been shown in my sidebar (like_4 unread messages) maybe there is a way to "get rid of them" but I haven't found yet....

In Diigo, there are tons of tools that I haven't had time to explore myself, but click on "messages", then on the right side, you'll see "setting". There you'll have the options for your messages.

Let us keep digging Diigo!

Dear Holly,

Thanks for the wonderful ramblings and thinking out loud. This is what makes the collective experience we have in the learningwithcomputers group so enriching. I loved it! I hope that by the end of this exploration, you can see even more benefits to online social bookmarking.

I was also sold with delicious. But I have to confess that after I started using Diigo and experiencing its social power, I almost don't access my delicious as there's a way to import all your bookmarks to Diigo and then keeping replicating the new ones to delicious. Neat, isn't it? We'll talk about this feature later on. Let's go little by little.

Your questions were all very pertinent and they will be answered in due time as we move along. I kept them in our wikipage so that by the end we can check them back to see if we got answers for all.

You wrote:


> > What would you suggest for our online bookmarking good practices?

> I agree on the tagging comments -- already I'm learning through del.icio.us that as Carla advocated, creating tags that make sense to me, as well as creating tags that might mesh with others' labeling, is a best practice.


This is something we need to explore as a group, our own tagging system. I just read a very interesting book called "Everything is Miscellaneous" from David Weinberger. He addresses issues of what he calls the third order, our digital world. Tagging is one powerful element of it and he asks, "Are people tagging for themselves or for others to retrieve information?". My own belief here, as a group, we should use tagging for private use, as an extension of our memory, as well as for public good.

Do you think, as a group, we could have some tagging standards?

This discussion is getting really exciting!

Dear Mary,

Great to have you here so that we can all learn together in Diigo!

I think you're right in when you mention that your bookmarks reflect "what I've been reading and thinking about." They tell much of who you are, what your interests are. The great power of social bookmarking is that it's really our "share button". You'll see that in Diigo it's even easier. I love the "twitter this" feature, too, that we'll explore.

Mary Hillis wrote:


> Speaking of connections, I really like the networking or social feature of sites like delicious and Diigo. I have primarily used delicious until now. You can subscribe to tags, and people can suggest links for you too. During EVO, I found both of these options great ways to discover new sites.

This is so true and I guess Diigo makes the social part even easier and more interactive.

> Disadvantages: I have over 1000 bookmarks on delicious ... information overload ;)

As for information overload, I consider bookmarking a way to dribble information overload. Why? If you have tons of bookmarks together with tons of people's bookmarks being tagged, you can use those bookmarks to create meaning whenever needed. You save them for later. One day, you can retrieve them and use them as you wish. This is exactly what David Weinberger says about the infrastructure of meaning, "We are building this connected miscellany link by link and tag by tag. Its value is in the implicit relationships that turn it into an infrastructure of meaning". It's an open-ended context in which we're creating streams of information. We can slice up our online resources as we wish according to our needs in a specific moment. A clear example: I'm starting to design an online course for educators for my school in Brazil. I've been collecting lots of resources for the past months, but have not done anything with them. The only immediate action has been to create a specific tag for later retrieval. So, I just used teacher_project. Last week, I got back to all I have tagged with teacher_project to make sense of it and see where I'd head to. Interesting results as I could mix and remix what I was considering for the course and my bookmarks gave me invaluable insights of what was worth keeping in or out.
>
> > What would you suggest for our online bookmarking good practices?
> Organization is key! Use tags, bundles, lists or whatever to stay organized. Annotate links if possible, so that you can easily remember what the site is and why you bookmarked it!
>
> Take advantage of your network, and explore other's bookmarks on a topic. Search tags in delicious to find pretty relevant and current search results. Explore!!


Great suggestions, as always!

Let us keep digging!

Hi, Paul,

Great to hear your views on Diigo. I haven't considered bandwidth issues and connectivity, but it's certainly a very important point if you consider that we are a group of educators all over the globe.

Diigo is feature-rich, but do you think this could be a disadvantage for our learners instead of an advantage? Too many places, tools, couldn't it be distracting?

Let's keep digging and checking the potential it holds for the classroom.

paul mountjoy wrote:
> Hi
>
> Wow, I didn't know about the forum in here. Another great feature. I am another delicious defector. I love diigo because of the groups capability which hooks me up with people with similar interests. I also love the toolbar and the speed of the bookmark popup (I sometimes have to use dial-up at home, so this makes the difference between using diigo or not).
>
> It is very feature rich compared to the simplicity of delicious and I am looking forward to exploring further with the group.
>
> Paul

Dear Teadira,

Certainly mobility is one of the first factors when we consider online bookmarking. The social part is what encourages us to make new connections and make sense out of the tons of resources available. We can interact, add and construct knowledge collectively. This is powerful for us and, consequently, for our students!

Teadira Pérez wrote:

> I have been using social bookmarking for a while and I think it is very useful because you carry with you your bookmarks and you can access them whenever and wherever you want. Apart from this, I think social bookmarking can help you organise your links and caategorise them taking into account your teaching needs.
>
> I will try to write more next time :). I am enjoying reading all posts.
>
> Teadira

Berta Leiva wrote:
> Hi everyone and thanks Carla and Susana for leading the way once more.

Thanks for being here with us, Berta.

> A lot of ideas going on in the forum. I am eager to see the "power" of Diigo compared to Delicious or Blinklist. I already see it has a forum option but I wonder if this is just for group accounts or for individuals as well.

I also hope you can see the power it holds, mainly in the connections possibilities and useful tools for the classroom.

> 1) How does it affect our teaching practices?

>I have a del.icio.us account for my present writing course and most students have not touched the bookmarks, even if they have the password and it was suggested they added more links to our collective bookmark site. I was rather frustrated by this, but I guess they are overwhelmed with new stuff.

This is so true, Berta. I know the feeling! My strategy in the online course I was teaching was the following. I never posted the links in our course platform. I wanted the students to explore our bookmarks, so in Delicious, I bundled the tags in weeks. For each week, I'd direct them to the bookmarks of the week. Also, I introduced to them the idea of social bookmarking. Though our course was a listening course for EFL students, I showed them what bookmarking had to do with learning English and how they could profit from them later on. Besides, I created a tutorial with the most important features in Delicious. To my surprise, some of them signed up and added our course to their network. I was extremely happy. If it could be of any use, at least for some, mission accomplished.
Here's the info they got :
http://www.pageflakes.com/elearningctj . Click on the "bookmarking" tag.



> 2) What are its advantages and disadvantages?
> Of course we collect lots of links that seem useful or interesting to us at a certain moment. The down side is we might not have the time and space necessary to go back to them later. Tagging, as many have mentioned, is crucial. Sometimes mine is a bit messy because I am in a hurry but save anyway because I would like to check sites later. Oh, sure, the "Fear of missing something". I usually never go back to them, though. I will say I save and tag 95% of the time but only check links 1% of the time, especially if I want to go back to something very specific. Otherwise, I google it again and usually find it.


Take a look at what I said to Mary about information overload. Another aspect is that I think that online bookmarking should make us guilty-free instead of guilty because we don't check all the links we've bookmarked. Who said we need to look at them all? Maybe the only thing we need to really do is to make tagging the extension of our memories and create unique tags for specific personal/professional projects.

Just today Michele Martin wrote a wonderful post about using the tagging system in Delicious to create an online portfolio.
Look how cool the idea of an updated online portfolio is!

Another thing that we will play around here and you'll see that has great potential to easily visualize what you've been tagging is the "webslides" feature.



> 3) What would you suggest for our online bookmarking good practices?
> Better tagging, more going back to really check key sites, not marking everything.

Better tagging, yes! Let's discuss ways in which we can achieve it.

Let us keep digging Diigo!

Illya Arnet wrote:

> I just found this forum and see that there's already been a lot of sharing.

Isn't it great, Illya, to have such a nice crowd of motivated educators?


> One of the disadvantages has been mentioned already, namely overload.

Please, Illya, check what I mentioned to Mary (message #15) and to Berta (message #22)

I've been seriously considering using one account solely for my language learners so they don't have to sift through loads of other stuff as well.

If you consider Diigo for that matter, you could easily set up a group and you could have the bookmarks for your students to start with and encourage them to share their bookmarks with the group. Also, I'd consider specific tags. So, if you're having a course divided in topics, I'd have a unique tag for that topic, then you could provide your students with the link to the specific links you want them to check.



> Besides just sharing links with the odd description, I see Diigo as being especially useful for teaching because of the comments and post-its funtion (just tried it out for the first time!) You can guide your learners to key areas in a text of whatever kind it may happen to be and then let them know what it is they should be looking for/at.

I think the comments feature and the sticky notes have great potential in the classroom!


> I'm looking forward to using Diigo more :-)

Me too! Let's keep exploring Diigo possibilities together.

Berta Leiva wrote:

> Thanks for the two links, especially the one on how you used bookmarking in your class. I will check them out immediately as I prefer to see what they are about than simply tagging them, ha, ha.
> When I watched the Youtube video on Diigo (LwC wiki), the slide feature caught my attention.
> Working with bookmarks to make a digital portfolio sounds very creative.

I was just exploring the webslides feature, Berta, and realized why I had tagged certain things under a certain keyword. It was like going back and finding hidden treasures, because even if you are going through the slides you can click on the links. Had fun playing around.

I thought the idea of a digital portfolio using tags a very interesting one, even more with the webslides. You can keep track of all the online artifacts you've been creating. Interesting for busy educators!

> BTW, any idea why the name Diigo? The "go" seems sort of obvious but how about dii? "Digital I+I"?

I have no idea why the name. Will keep the questions in our wiki to come back to it.

Besos,
Carla

Hi, Terry,

Welcome aboard!

You really got to the heard of social bookmarking. In fact, its power is exactly in a group of people making available their resources. Then, the information out there can be retrieved, mixed and remixed in the ways we need it when we need it. David Weinberger says that with folksonomies, we can filter information, resources in the way out, not on the way in. As we bookmark and tag stuff, the links are there. As we need them, we manipulate information to make meaning, to construct knowledge. Thus, social bookmarking adds value to the information everybody is gathering in the digital world.

Well, just some ramblings!


terry freedman wrote:
> I think a really big thing is to change one's way of thinking. The key thing about social bookmarking is the "social" part of the term. By sharing your bookmarks in this way, you are making connections with other people, and therefore other resources, that you otherwise would not have come across.

Hey, Holly.

I can see you've been really exploring Diigo! Thanks for the information. We can try to check its authenticity, but it makes sense.

Thanks for sharing it.

Beijos,
Carla

Holly Dilatush wrote:
> ask.com led me to this:
>
> The Acronym Diigo is an abbreviation for Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff.
>
> not sure of its authenticity?
> Holly
> g'nite all