Group items tagged

Annotation is Suddenly Fun Each semester, I try (in vain, usually) to get my students to annotate their text book. I do this to prepare them not only for future studies, but also for the annotation that research demands they do. Diigo, suddenly, makes the students want to annotate their bookmarks. It is their chance to make sure the world (or their group) knows how important specific words on a webpage are to them.

Diigo allows a More Advanced Conversation As I mentioned above, social bookmarking allows students to engage in a conversation with other scholars on the same topic. Diigo allows this conversation to move beyond just the “Read this” comment and actually allows the students to create a dialogue. Through Diigo, students have a variety of ways to engage in this dialogue. Creating Groups–creating groups of individuals within their network who are researching on the same topic allows students to share bookmarks they have found. Using Forums–Within a group, the administrator has the opportunity to create a forum that allows each member of the group to ask and respond to specific issues on a topic. For example, if one student cannot find statistics, they can mention this in the forum and receive an answer (or better yet, a bookmark) from one of the group members. Highlighting–This allows one student to specifically show others in the group what they find important about the bookmark. But the highlights are not owned or seen by just the individual. If John shares a bookmark with highlighting, Frank can not only see John’s highlighting, but can also add his own highlighting (which is also available to John). Sticky Notes–In addition to highlighting, students can add to the conversation on the page. Their comments can be seen by others who read the page (if the notes are public) and their friends can add to this conversation.

But Diigo provides innovative ways to interact with web sites.Diigo lets you highlight text on a page and annotate it with sticky notes. As a PhD student in the 21st century, this innovation frees me from downloading and re-reading sites I use for my research on the internet. I use less paper and I save time.

I generally shy away from using any service that requires me to download a tool bar, but the Diigo tool bar earned its keep quickly. The tool bar not only provides quick access to your Diigo dashboard, bookmarks, lists, groups, and contacts, but also makes for easy bookmarking, highlighting, commenting, and sending.

It's been called a supercharged social networking tool, a cut above del.icio.us, and "Diigo" has even been used as a verb. Even though I know I haven't discovered all the features, it's changed the way I interact with web pages.

History

Why We Like Diigo

use the web to research

as easily as if I were using a yellow highlighter and a red pen

mark up web pages

no longer need to copy

all digitally facilitated with the Diigo social bookmarking and annotating tool

shifted the way I read the world wide web

much more active

in the same way I use a paper textbook

scribble in the margins

"dog-ear" important pages

individually or collaboratively

highlight and comment as I go, building a path

snippets that I want to remember

return to what is important

information-processing is heightened

a greater level of usefulness

not tied to any one computer

private or public sticky notes

a powerful collaborative tool

message boards

automated email summaries

extract highlighted text from a set of web pages

create a personalized learning environment for any topic

"Extract Annotations"

replicating what I used to do on paper

all of those highlighted passages in one place

Diigo saves me a lot of this time

access many more sources of information

my ability to scan, organize, and absorb multiple sources of information is greatly increased

also see what others have highlighted or commented

when I search on Diigo the results are based on what my colleagues in the field have identified as important and relevant

Diigo is a tool that fosters collaboration and resource sharing

benefit from others' insight

faculty committees use Diigo

everyone on the committee has access to a growing set of shared links

such as ways we can build a more sustainable culture

helps to identify important segments

the more of an individual’s thoughts they include via the commenting tools, the better

thoughtful comments tied to specific portions of the text are more illuminating

localized comments

fruitful conversations

create your own groups for any purpose

feedback of other group members

discover new tools and content

When I was ready to collect

professional development interests of each teacher

exciting for me and my students

metacognition (thinking about thinking)

I used the Diigo for educators feature to set all the students up with an account that meets COPPA requirements

I had such a fun time

assess the students' work

really cool

like I was reading the stories along with each of them

kids used the tools built in to Diigo to demonstrate their use of the reading strategies that we've been practicing with paper text

showed their thinking

asking questions, reflecting, and analyzing the text by inserting these as comments

a powerful tool for supporting and scaffolding metacognition

deepens my thinking about the content

see how my colleagues have responded

my Diigo network

Diigo also stores a "cached" version of each web page you visit

the best tool is one that meets all of our needs all of the time. We believe that Diigo is this tool.

Diigo can also be set to update other networks

Diigo is a powerful tool that is literally changing the way that we look at the web. It has gotten me excited about bookmarking again.

I subscribe to several "groups" on Diigo

Several people have collaboratively worked on this article

Demetri Orlando

Michèle Drechsler

Sarah Hanawald

Beth Ritter-Guth