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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!

Denise Olson from Family Matters and Moultrie Creek commented about her Genealogy Research Resources at Diigo.  I finally visited, registered at Diigo, and joined Denise's group.  Once I joined, I was amazed at all of the resource links Denise has accumulated.  As of this morning, there are 624 bookmarks and usually multiple links within each bookmark.  It's too early in the morning, and I haven't had enough coffee, to focus enough and count all the links, but take my word for it - there are lots. 

All of the bookmarks are tagged by general subject so it's easy to find the your area of interest.  The best part of Diigo and the Genealogy Research Resources group is it's a collaborative environment - if you have some unique resource links you can add them to the group so everyone can make use of them.  I think this is an incredible site, and Denise has put great effort into creating and adding most of the current links. 

The Good: The “About This Page” info– if it works correctly (it’s a beta, I totally understand when things don’t work quite as expected…..especially when aggregating information from multiple APIs) the About This Page is a useful, central repository of data on a selected page. This feature could be incredibly useful to companies that want to see what people are saying about them, blogs that want to know what their readers think of their stories, and anyone curious about how their information is being perceived by readers. Like the other social annotation services, the “Blog this” option is excellent, as it immediately does a cut and paste + login + compose + automatic reference citation. The interface is also very straight-forward and easy to use. When you log in at diigo, there are no points of confusion, and you can easily access your bookmarks and annotated content wherever you are. I could have really used something like this in college.

The Bad: A few technical glitches, but that’s expected at this early stage in the game. The only other problem I see with diigo is that they are in an incredibly crowded space, but I like their angle.

Conclusion: Like most of these services, it would be unfair to spend an afternoon trying to scratch the surface and give a detailed review of the features. Now that I’ve got the Firefox plugin installed, I’ll continue giving diigo a shot. To me, it would be interesting to see a side-by-side feature comparison between the different social bookmarking and annotation services out there. But that’s for another day, as this is Sunday, the Patriots are playing now, and the Sox have game seven tonight. Priorities, my friends, priorities.

Enter Diigo. I’m surprised this excellent social bookmarking service doesn’t have a higher profile online. It’s fast, easy, and it saves a cache of every page by default. I really don’t see how del.icio.us can compete, considering that Diigo looks much nicer and still manages to respond more crisply. (Yes, there are other social bookmarking sites out there, and were I a true productivity blogger and not a dilettante, I’d give you a point-by-point feature comparison with a nifty chart. In this case, I’m going to fall back on “trust me.” Diigo’s the best I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a bunch.)

Use Diigo for static pages with useful content. Here are some suggested uses from my own Diigo love affair: Research. Why bother copying and pasting articles you’ll be using in your next paper or presentation when you can add them to a searchable database in one click? Publicity. If you have a blog, podcast, or other promotable work, you’ll want to clip all the reviews, blog mentions, etc. Diigo’s perfect for quickly and easily capturing those mentions for posterity and, since it’s shareable, you can show off your best clips in a snap. Want List. It’s not really a resolution, but I do plan to cut down on my expenditures in 2008, and one way that’s always worked well for me in the past is creating a “want list.” When I see a nifty notebook or gadget or safety razor I want to buy, I add it to the want list with the date. 30 days later, if it still sounds awesome, I’ll buy it. But often my enthusiasm for that nifty cable wrap I saw on Cool Tools has waned and I’ve saved twenty bucks. Lifehacks. Obviously. If you’re like me, you’re constantly gathering tips and advice on productivity and technology from around the Web. Save them here and go over them periodically to see which ones actually worked in practice and which were quickly forgotten. Recipes. Several recipe sites let you aggregate your favorites, but if you get your recipes from multiple sites, you can use Diigo to keep them all in the same place. Blogging. One of the big advantages of a social bookmarking service is the social part. Diigo makes it easy to share your links, post them to your blog, or even do an automatic daily post of links to your site.

Diigo: I LOVE Diigo. It's a browser add-on (Firefox and IE) that allows users to highlight text directly on a website, then add a sticky-note for comments, which can be published to a group. This would be an excellent way for students to share/discuss websites as they research. Highlighting text creates an archive on the Diigo site, essentially saving all the information (including a shot of the page) and comments in one place. From there students can add additional comments on all the pages, avoiding doing a WWW treasure hunt.

Diigo, which is Wikialong on steroids. A great cross-browser tool, Diigo is multi-functional, allowing users to highlight and annotate text on websites, post sticky-notes, bookmark, save video clips, post to blogs or the web and share. It loads into your browser and even offers a "light" version called "Diigolet" that's less feature rich but easier to use.

Like Wikialong, this would be a great tool for students to collect and share resources as they create wiki projects (or any other project!) Moreover, it supports multiple browsers, unlike Wikialong so if you don't use Firefox, you can still use Diigo.I think I'd use Wikialong for younger students (say, 4-9), then introduce older students to Diigo.

Why I am switching to Diigo from Google notebooks The context:  Over the years bookmarking tools have evolved with ever increasing ease-of-use and power.  Yet many times the migration pathway to new technology presents a formidable barrier to adoption, despite the desire for greater functionality. In my case, I have accumulated an archive of hundreds of bookmarks.  Most of these have been organized in the traditional way (folders, sub-folders) and reside primarily in my browser.  Occasionally, I need to dip in and find a bookmark, but flipping through folders and sub-folders or trying to remember and appropriate search term is terribly inefficient. First, Google Notebooks came to my rescue:  Google Notebooks provided a more efficient means of organizing and tracking bookmarks thematically, despite its inability to upload and convert my existing bookmarks, the functionality was compelling.  I made the switch.  Their excellent search engine provides rapid results plus as an added bonus it is incredibly easy to highlight relevant text from within websites.  Enter Diigo:  So why switch?  Features, features and more features.  Diigo is as easy to use as Google Notebooks with many more features.   These are the features that attract me most. 1.  Bookmarking and highlighting multiple blocks of text. 2.  Easy-to-use sticky notes and tagging form for rapid bookmarking. 3.  A powerful tag filter for rapid searching at all grain sizes. 4.  A method within Diigo to publish to my blog in Edublogs.  (I’m doing that now!) As a classroom teacher , I am intrigued by: 1.  The possibility of creating a shared resource with other like-minded teachers. 2.  Marking up webpages and sharing sticky notes with my students. 3.  The possibility that student’s themselves can mark-up nd share their thoughts with others students.

About publishing to a blog Right now, I am writing within Diigo.  I have set  up Diigo to publish to my Edublogs account.  So as I surf the web and come across an interesting website, I can highlight the most relevant text then right-click to bookmark, tag and write a sticky note to comment.  In the same drop-down menu, I can "blog this," which I am doing now. Here’s the link to a description of a joint venture to produce collaborative video for wikimedia.  This will go into my Diigo bookmarks with the tags, Web 2.0, authoring, video production.

3. Diigo has shown a committment to listening to its users. Well at least the educational users, and they have been making small changes almost daily since Lisa Parisi held the elluminate session this past Sunday. Maggie Tsai and Wade Ren have been in and out of multiple conversations on Diigo and posting on edubloggers pages (Look up) to actively understand our needs and look to make changed in Diigo to fit the educational model… You can be offended by the “hate” comment Wade made, but this is his company and he wants to make change to satisify folks… I really like delicious since I was introduced to it a year ago. Easy linking, I can tag from a tool bar with comments I can build a passive network… But Delicious is not listening to folks or making changes even though they “introduced” their version 2 about a year ago, and it has not appeared. Even the tech bloggers are taking delicious to task for this. The responsiveness that Wade and Maggie have shown so far is really impressive in my opinion. Just wanted to share my thoughts on why I am continuing to investigate and use Diigo. I know that you feel a bit targeted for “not drinking the coolaid” but I think what you are getting hit hard on is if you don’t like the service you do not have to use it. Or with the participation Wade and Maggie are showing get involved and see if it can become what you would like to see… Just my thoughts, Scott

# Scott Weidigon 02 Apr 2008 at 10:27 pm Jim, I went to post this on Diigo and then hit my back space and went to a different page and lost everything boo… but I thought that I would post here instead. I am becoming more enamored over time with Diigo. At first I didn’t get the hoopla… I don’t “do” facebooks and myspaces etc. and I have enough of a hard time keeping up with twitter (don’t know how coolcatteacher and Dembo follow 1000+ folks… ) so I didn’t think much of the social side. But it could host links and re-post them to delicious so not too bad… here is what is changing my mind. 1. Bookmarking… on one hand it is the same as delicious tags yadda yadda… but I can now tag a s ite, send it to friends in the diigo network and outside of it, forward it to a specific topic group and throw it into a specifically designed list at the same time! That is efficient in my mind. the Twit thing is neat too so I don’t have to tinyurl it and post to twitter… and I can even keep my delicious account updated through Diigo so I don’t have to do double work… (and when i imported it brough my delicious notes that was a nice touch)

2. Annotation/stikites/highlighting. We all research and move information into different places, google notebook, MS OneNote, Zoho Notobook… but those pieces of information are then only our notes and ideas… Diigo’s highlighint and annotation allows you to make any page a conversational document. That is powerful. I just played with it for the first time today and was blown away with ease at which you could do this. those notes can then be seen by any diigo user. The collaborative possibilities are astounding. if you have not tried this or seen it go to http://lisaslingo.blogspot.com and scroll down to the Best Day Ever post. If you have your Diigo sidebar open you will see two notes, and the Highlighing that Steve Kimmel did. Also, I don’t know if it is showing up yet I tagged a sticky note next to the first picture there… my comments appear in the side bar, but I see the note markup and I am thinking others will to eventually, but am not sure. Think of all the times your teachers ahve been trying to teach textmarking but can’t in the Textbooks… now we can do this to the web.

Diigo is fantastic social bookmarking and proto-blogging tool, marrying the best of del.icio.us, the leading bookmarking site, and Google Notebook, a recently upgraded and highly flexible tool for interacting with and reviewing your websurfing experience. I didn't spend much time with Google Notebook once I discovered it by way of comparing del.icio.us with Google Bookmarks, but I played with it enough to notice a lot of excellent features that del.icio.us did not have, including the ability to automatically associate bookmarks with a current project, flexible blog-like layout for groups of bookmarks, and collaboration features. As I moved bookmarks into Google Notebook, I started to realize I would be missing out on some advantages of del.icio.us, such as strong interconnectivity through tagging and an exceedingly simple and crisp interface. Enter Diigo, which retains del.icio.us's advantages while sprucing it up with notetaking, tagging flexibility, and collaborative features that rival Google Notebook and then some. I compare these three approaches to bookmarking on four fronts: tagging, blogging, collaboration, and "other stuff".

Tagging: When I'm surfing, I almost never want to slow down to tag or detail the links I'm saving. I'm either just browsing, and I just want the page to be saved in some repository of "cool" somewhere I might be able to check it out later, OR I want to save the page and others to come back to for some project I'm working on. Although its actual tagging features (labelling) are limited, Google Reader was cool because it would automatically save links to the notebook I was currently working on, which seemed easier than having to tag the page every time I save for del.icio.us. Diigo isn't quite this easy, but it does provide the option of setting default tags so I can cruise through surfing without pause. It also allows you to change tags for multiple bookmarks at once, a feature that has been delayed in del.icio.us during the extended wait for version 2.0. Winner: Diigo

Blogging: Sometimes, I don't want to put a whole lot of thought into consolidating my links into one coherent group. In this regard, all three services provide suitable options for tossing together semi-coherent groups of links on independent webpages for others to see. Google Reader does a good job of making scraps from around the internet look palatable; see this example about ultralight backpacking gear, but it does not offer the same level of interconnectivity that del.icio.us or Diigo provide. A similar example from del.icio.us shows it's limitations: the links cannot be groups under one note or be put into any order other than alphabetical or chronological, and pictures and other non-bookmark material cannot be added. Diigo does not have any of these limitations: its lists can be ordered as you please and divided into sections, and they are built independently of the tags, so you can draw bookmarks from anywhere into the page, as you can see in this example. The option that makes Diigo stand out is its ability to transcend the status of "proto-blog" by easily exporting links to the blog of the user's choice. By simply selecting links and clicking "Send to Blog >>", a skeletal blog entry is started in Diigo which can be fleshed out and published on the spot. Winner: Diigo

I’ve been loving Diigo since I ditched Delicious a few months ago. They are constantly adding awesome features and today I stumbled on the groups feature. Basically it allows you to create a group of like-minded users (it can be public or private) to share links, comments and it has a forum baked right in.

This is HUGE… It allows you to create micro communities and adds much greater value to “social” bookmarking. You can be a part of multiple groups - which are often topical in nature. There are all kinds of different options that allow you to discuss bookmarks in comment threads and in a forum. There are RSS feeds for each group - so you don’t even have to join one to get some benefit. And there’s a great “slideshow” feature that will allow you to quickly lopp through the bookmarked sites.

I have only used 1 product in this genre: Google Notebook. In my experience it integrates tightly with Firefox, has a right click contextual menu option, ability to publicize or privatize multiple notebooks, etc.

I use Google Notebook, which is essentially the same thing. It has really helped me and changed the way I browse.

Sometimes bookmarking something you want to reference later doesn't quite do the trick since the page might change or you just can't remember what it was you found so interesting.

NeoArch July 25, 2006 Diigo Criticism Filed under: diigo — NeoArch @ 8:52 am Diigo Launches, Nobody Cares - Mashable* Diigo is being criticized over on Mashable for being just one more social bookmarking site. That’s all well and good. I guess when you create a new social tool you should expect that–unless, of course, you create a good one. And that, my friends, is what Diigo is. So in answer to the who cares question, I offer the following: Who cares? Bloggers. Trust me. I am one. On several blogs. A large part of blogging is just countering other bloggers. It’s sorta like what I am doing now. Who am I kidding? It is what I am doing now. The advantage to bloggers is twofold. First, Diigo allows you to store your notes right on the page of the blog with which you disagree. Second, Diigo has blog functionality that lets you blog right from Diigo. Which is what I am doing now. Tagging and blogging can occur seamlessly. And it allows you to have multiple blogs. Try doing that with the Performancing plugin (which I love.) Who cares? Researchers. They have wanted a tool like this for years. I don’t know how many times I have wanted to put marginalia on a blog like I do my books. Now I can. Others can as well. I am a librarian in an academic institution. Trust me. Researchers will use this. Who cares? Anyone who uses the web. This is the type of tool that has a wide appeal, especially for those who do not already use a social bookmarking service. This one IS better than others. This one DOES offer something others don’t. This one DOESN’T just clip text. This one puts your notes right where you want them. Hey, I realize there is some truth to the Web 2.x hype. Who wants another social site that has a name that sounds like a Star Wars character. Put if you’re going to fault Diigo for anything, fault it for having a stupid name. Don’t fault it for competing in crowded space. It fills a need for many people, just like all the mom and pop Linux distros out there do. It is marketable, as is evidenced by the fact that over 10,000 people signed up for the Diigo Beta test.

You should know about Diigo! Filed under: Uncategorized, Technology, folksonomy, diigo — NeoArch @ 9:09 am To those of you who read this blog on a regular basis, I want to apologize for posting infrequently lately. I have had a couple other projects that I have been working on, plus my Church had vacation Bible school last week. You don’t get much done during VBS week. I just wanted to take the time to inform you about a new social bookmarking service. For those of you who already have one, you’re probably groaning, “Not another one!” I know. I know. I have been using Del.icio.us for…well…forever. I can’t remember life before Del.icio.us. In fact, I have no intentions on ceasing from using Del.icio.us. (With Diigo and its toolbar, I don’t have to, but more on that in another post.) For those of you who don’t have a social bookmarking service…well…you need one. Social bookmarking is a way to keep track of all of the websites that you visit. It allows you to describe the page using several one word “tags.” For example, if you visited the page for “Talladega Nights,” you might tag it as “movie,” “Will_Ferrell,” “stupid,” and “NASCAR.” This may seem like a useless service until you cannot find that page with the thing that you needed for your job and now you’re gonna get fired cause you can’t produce what you said you could. Or perhaps you can’t find that online add for that ring for your wife that you saw that would save you $1000 so now you can’t get a new johnboat because you don’t have the extra $$$$ you would have saved. Trust me. You need one. There are several out there. Diigo is different, though. The service is only in beta testing at this point, so you have to actually request an invitation to participate. Diigo not only lets you save a bookmark to the page, but it also allows you to highlight content. It lets you add virtual sticky notes to the page. This really is the ideal tool for research and blogs. You can access your thoughts about a certain web page from anywhere in the world, right on the web page. How many times have you wished that blogs and webpages worked like books. You wish that you could add marginalia. You wish that the marginalia could be either public or private. It’s all possible with Diigo.

Don’t just take my word for it. Go try out Diigo’s playground for yourself. If you don’t think the service is the coolest thing since Cocoa Pebbles (it’s like cereal, only chocolaty), then walk away from your keyboard, go get in your 1973 Ford Maverick, throw in your favorite Captain and Tenille 8-track, and …well… you get the picture. I have just started using Diigo in the past few days, so I will have more to say about it later. However, I do think that this is one of the best social bookmarking sites that I have used. Long live Diigo!

Diigo*:[PR6] “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff.” Web 2.0 style text-based interface, bookmarks and annotation using Tags. The toolbar gives highlight and blogging support. Update! UI redesigned. Some Features: One click bookmark with custom Tag. One click copy. Related Tags(+add and remove), Search(My/Community/Tag/Full Text). In page Advanced Search(Anywhere/tags/title/URL/highlights/Text/comments/without). Direct Links. Public/Private Bookmark or only notes/highlights, Inbox(follow user and tags), Bookmark username, RSS, mail, batch checked bookmarks( public, private, edit, extract highlights, send), Tags, Tag Cloud that is also a Tag editor. Image bookmarks have thumbshots(toolbar required). Cache copy. Tools: in page Bookmarklet (annotate, bookmark & forward) for IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera. Import directly from browser bookmarks, file and del.icio.us. Ajax Linkroll generator with options. Add to Diigo blog footer buttons and code. [button code]

Toolbar(Firefox 1.0+) features: Quick-D: a One click Bookmark with automatic tagging. Customize Search box-menu. Bookmark Status Icon that shows whether the current page has been bookmarked by yourself, an other user or has comments. Right click for highlighting and saving images. Blog This! button with support for WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, MovableType. Quick access bookmarks drop-down menu by setting a tag. bookmark to: de.licio.us, , Furl, Netvouz, RawSugar, Simpy, Spurl, ma.gnolia, connotea and locally. Has a good about/help page

What’s special: Space OR comma separated tags. Earlier/Later Tag navigation shows number of bookmarks. Private notes on Public Bookmarks. With toolbar: Blogging support for WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad and Movable Type. Highlight with visual options, Multiple posting to other social bookmarks. Bookmark Status Icon. Quick-D. Customizable search.

Diigo’s group feature gives researchers an awesome platform for managing research sources and collaborating with others. Basically a Diigo group allows multiple users to share links related to the group’s topic and offers a forum for conversation. That in itself is a fabulous research tool, but that just touches on the capabilities of a Diigo group.