Group items tagged

Social Bookmarking For Enterprise Knowledge Management March 16th, 2007 Edit We’re very grateful to Robert Berkman, editor of The Information Advisor, for noticing our new Groups feature so quickly, and understanding the potential it adds to Diigo’s already great set of tools. In an online supplement to the magazine, posted on his blog, Intelligent Agent, he reviewed various free online services for potential enterprise use as knowledge management tools.

Our design philosophy of seamlessly integrating tools and creative innovations to provide the greatest benefits to our users seems to be more and more recognized and appreciated

Josh: Diigo is a web-based tool for what the company is calling "social annotation." It lets users highlight, annotate (via sticky notes), and clip information from any web site. What I think makes Diigo potentially very useful is that you can share your annotations, clippings and bookmarks with a group. For students and professors I think Diigo could help groups organize their thoughts and research for team projects. Marshall reviewed them a year ago for TechCrunch.

Marshall: I like Diigo a lot, but I haven't kept using them in the time since I first reviewed them. The new Webslides feature looks like it could come in handy and the groups looks solid

I don't know how many more features this product needs. There are already so many! I think they need to focus on finding distribution channels for what they've already built.

WebSlides - Transforms Bookmarks Once Again

This innovation is a browser based player that displays live Web pages with integrated annotation, sticky notes and highlights in an interactive slideshow. With this cool tool users can record and narrate tracks as well as add background music to make compelling shows - and somewhat more. WebSlides is being presented at the Office 2.0 Conference as I write this, so we wanted you to have a look at this simple, innovative and useful tool as well.  

Web 2.0 has to a large extent been about new ways of organizing and manipulating data. This is particularly true of bookmarks and other links. Innovative developments like Second Brain, Particls and others have pushed the envelope in creating useful and fascinating ways for organizing all types of links and data. Well, testing this little tool makes me wonder why someone did not think of this before (I - know just comment and tell us about your service too). WebSlides is like StumbleUpon in motion actually. It does not yet have the "resident" features of SU, but WebSlide creations saved or submitted to other services will exhibit a similar feel. So just when we thought StumbleUpon and a host of others had done everything with pages - along comes WebSlides. Here is a short list of things users might do with this service. Create guided tours of websites Display a list of houses or other products to clients Bundle education resources or research data Make shows of favorite places when visiting or traveling Create briefings or tutorials and tours on virtually any subject Present a whole series of news stories on a topic to digg or del.icio.us and others for scrutiny Interactively submit "collections" of stories and data

Using Diigo for Organizing the Web for your Class 31 07 2007 A good friend of mine, Randy Lyseng, has been telling people of the tremendous power and educational value that can be gained from social bookmarking in the classroom. His personal favourite is Diigo. My preference is a social bookmarking tool called http://diigo.com. With diigo, you can highlight, add stick notes and make your comments private or public. (Randy Lyseng, Lyseng Tech: Social Bookmarking, November 2006) After listening to Randy praise Diigo at every opportunity, I finally started playing with the site (and corresponding program, more on that in a bit) this summer (I know Randy - I’m slow to catch on…)As I started to play with the system, my mind started reeling with all the possibilities. First off, like any other social bookmarking tool, Diigo allows you to put all your favorites/bookmarks in one “central” location. Students can access them from ANY computer in the world (talk about the new WWW: whatever, whenever, where ever). They just open up your Diigo page, and there are all the links. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Diigo’s power lies in it’s group annotations. That’s right, people can now write in the margins of webpages. You can highlight passages of interest, write notes, and even write a blog entry directly from another webpage, quoting passages right from the original text. Sounds great - but to do all that it must be complicated right? Nope. To use these advanced features all you need to do is run the Diigo software. This can either be done using a bookmarklet or by downloading and installing the Diigo toolbar. While both have basically the same features, the toobar is less finicky, and allows you to use contextual menus to access features quickly. I also find the toolbar’s highlighting and sticky notes to be easier to read. Ok fine… I can leave notes on webpages - so what? Here’s an example. I’m thinking about having my 7B’s record radio plays. I’ve looked them up online and found many scripts from all the old classics available. However many also contain the old endorsements from tobacco and other companies. So I go to a play that I’d like to my students to record and highlight the old commercial. If they’re using diigo when they access this page they’ll see the same text highlighted in pink, and when they mouse over the highlighted text they’ll get a hidden message from me - “I’d like you to write a new advertisement for this section. What other advertisement do you think we could write for here? Write an ad for a virtue or trait that you think is important. For example - “Here’s a news flash for every person in Canada. It’s about a sensational, new kind of personality that will make you the envy of all those around you. It’s call trustworthiness. Why with just a pinch of this great product….” They now have a writing assignment to go along with the recording of the radio play. Adding assignments is just one possibility. You can ask questions about the site, or have students carry on conversations about the text. Perhaps about the validity of some information. These notes can be made private (for your eyes only), public, or for a select group of people. You could use the same webpage for multiple classes, and have a different set of sticky notes for each one! Diigo will also create a separate webpage for each group you create, helping you organize your bookmarks/notes further! This technology is useful for any class, but I think is a must have for any group trying to organize something along the lines of the 1 to 1 project. I’m hoping to convince all the core teachers to set up a group page for their classes, and organize their book marks there! I’ve already started one for my 7B Language Arts Class! One of the first questions I was asked when I started looking at this site, and more importantly at the bookmarklets and toolbar was is it secure? Will it bring spyware onto our systems? How about stability? I’ve currently been running the Diigo bookmarklet and toolbar on 3 different browsers, Explorer, Firefox, and Safari (sorry, there’s no Safari toolbar yet), across 4 different computers and 2 different platforms with no problems. I’ve also run every virus and spyware scan I can think of, everything checks out clean. I’ve also done an extensive internet check, and can’t find any major problems reported by anyone else. To my mind it’s an absolutely fantastic tool for use in the classroom. Thanks Diigo! And thanks Randy for pointing me in the right direction!

Diigo Introduces WebSlides Sep 6th, 2007 by moultriecreek The folks at Diigo have been busy adding new features to their research-friendly bookmark platform. Today they introduced WebSlides which allows users to select a group of bookmarks, arrange them in a specific order and turn them into a slideshow. What is really cool about this is viewers are looking at a show of live sites - not screenshots. Slideshow creators can include background music - or even narration - to the show although trying to keep the audio and video synched is a stretch. WebSlides is still in beta, but you can view several sample slideshows to get a feel for the system. One of them is even about genealogy.

Wow is not a good enough word for this! lol I enjoyed your WebSlide presentation…. Janice

It was a lovely presentation, indeed! And thank you for featuring my little home town’s website as an example; I got TONS of people stopping by and taking a look. Much appreciated!

Day 1 - 6th November - An Introduction to Web Design Here are the tasks for Day 1: Task 1 - Reviewing websites Using the tools from Diigo.com, you will review one website from the following list. Review the site based on the following criteria - usability, accessibility, use of images, quality of text / content and navigation. Highlight sections of the page that you wish to comment upon, and add sticky notes using the Diigo toolbar to record your opinions. The sites to choose from are: Wolverhampton City Learning Centre Wolverhampton Wanderers BVS Performance Systems Tally Ho Uniforms Oceanside High School Class of 1960 (added 06/11/07) Here is an image from Diigo showing student comments added to the Tally Ho Uniforms site:

Take your time to read the opening to the story below. Your job is to respond in two ways. 1 - Add a sticky note, using the Diigo toolbar, under your picture or name and  explain how you feel about this opening. 2 - Highlight some text and comment on part of the opening you enjoyed or want to talk about. Add you initials to your comments.

On Reflection  This activity was easy to set up - it is basically a page of text, the key thing is to have the Diigo toolbar (and class account) ready to roll. It can be done with a whole class using a computer suite for a literacy lesson, different children looking at different texts. The texts could also be in the public domain and they do not need to be narrative even. If you are looking at persuasive text why not look at the Alton Towers site and get the children to add Sticky Notes with their comments about how persuasive the site is. It could also be extended beyond popular fiction to include peer reviewing of children’s work they have published. (Lots to explore here I think) We worked between classes separated by a corridor but there is no reason why schools from anywhere could collaborate in response to a story or text. Given the right preparation and equipment I think this is a most manageable activity within a literacy independent session. My children had looked at Sticky Notes before but never added them independently - they catch on very fast and coped without any problems. Diigo with its “Highlight and Comment” tool can easily become a very useful online text annotation / response tool and I think I will keep using it.

I am pleased to welcome Diigo into my toolkit on a permanent contract :) all these ideas have been simmering for a while now and it is excellent to have the opportunity to see the children engaging and responding to text in this unique way.

Here’s how to set up Related Articles links using Diigo. First, you will need to use a blogging platform that allows you to include RSS feeds within your posts. I use WordPress - the installed version, not the hosted one - and a plugin called inlineRSS.

Each entry includes a friendly name (which you’ll use later in your blog post), a comma, the URL of the feed that you copied from Diigo, another comma and the number of minutes between refreshes. I’ve got mine set to check for new additions to the list every 60 minutes. Now, go to your blog post and enter the following code at the point where you want the feed list to be displayed: That’s it!

WebSlides - Transforms Bookmarks Once Again  Annotated New feature from Diigo (currently in private beta testing): create a slideshow of links with highlighting and sticky notes. You can record audio or add music to accompany it. I could see this having potential for basic tutorials or demos; you could do this instead of using screencast or recording software.

One aspect that characterises the new web is the increasing capacity to annotate or edit socially written texts - through wikis or collaborative projects, such as those referenced in Mark Marina’s ‘Marginalia in the library of babel‘ project. Diigo software adds a further dimension to social bookmarking: If social bookmarking allows us to share our library catalogs, social annotation sites allow us to share our libraries complete with their underlinings, highlights, and marginalia.

Web2 has been with us for some time increasing possibilities for social transparency transforming notions of privacy and ownership into a new form of social space and cultural intimacy. This is beautifully illustrated by the short video Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us by Michael Wesch

A better way to remember your online research April 15th, 2007 · No Comments How often have you found yourself scouring the web for information on a specific topic only to forget which websites you’ve visited and what information was valuable? That’s where I find myself a lot of times when I do online research. Whether that’s compiling a list of pros/cons for all the content management solutions out there to gathering data to write a paper, inevitably I forget something. You know how it is, you sit there and you scratch your head knowing there’s a reason you came to the conclusion you did, but can’t remember what it was. To everyone out there like feels my pain, I want to introduce you to Diigo. Here’s a brief rundown of what it does (as it relates to online research). Highlights text on web pages to make them stand out. Add comments to highlighted text or to the web page overall. Provides a central location to view all your highlights and/or comments.

And the cherry on top of all that is that there is no software installation required. All those features are easily accessible through a bookmarklet. If you prefer, there is a downloadable toolbar as well. The beauty of Diigo is that it documents your research. Before, I used to use a text editor. It was terrible. If I’d visit an interesting website, I’d make note of the URL, any interesting text, and any other tidbits I’d want to remember. Then I’d save it with some vague filename wherever the default save location was on my computer only to never find it again. And I call myself a tech-savvy.

Web 3.0…or is that 3D? Posted by edutrails on March 10th, 2007 I admit that I have been struggling to even wrap my brain around many of the new web apps out there that others seem to be raving about…blogs and wikis seem almost old school as learners move to Diigo and Second Life….mostly it’s a matter of time, but sometimes I am just overwhelmed by the ideas of other teachers with amazing creativity and vision. People like Jeff Utecht, Karl Fisch and Clay Burell blow me away (links to their blogs are to the left)…how they find the time to develop their own knowledge and share with others is beyond me…but probably the teacher that I am most in awe of is Vicki Davis…Vicki’s CoolCatTeacher blog is a veritable smorgasboard of practical applications and ideas, but also has a real mix of great vision.

February 21, 2007

Zotero, Diigo and Research

annotated bibliography programs and social bookmarking sites, such as Zotero and Diigo

Don't forget about HTML

February 25, 2007

HTML’s potential and actual suitability for much document interchange