Diigo Community

I am experimenting this semester with using Diigo to show students in one course my annotations on Supreme Court desegregation opinions. I've been able to provide translations of legal terms (certiorari, de jure, de facto, etc.), tell students where they can skip (e.g., issues of standing, which are tangential to the topics at hand for the course), what passages to read in depth, and some questions to think about specific passages.

There are some obvious possibilities that appeal to me to provide access to reading but some possibility for revenues where appropriate, such as books that are free online but that carry a Creative Commons license requiring a "binding license" fee, so anyone can read a book but where publishers or copy shops need to pay to distribute bound copies. This idea adds to that imaginary repertoire.

Making the potion: Focusing on the research process

I wrote about reflective learning, and really identified with Will Richardson’s and David Warlick’s comments about focusing on the learning and community

Sharing bookmarks–another route other than wikis is to have students set up accounts on del.icio.us or Furl or Google Notebook, because these tools not only allow students to bookmark their findings, but to share their bookmarks with other students.  Diigo not only allows students to bookmark their sites, but annotate them, clip them, and share them on a blog, email, or album.   Bookmarking a collection of sites that they can use later conveys the idea that the learning is ongoing, that they can “add to” what they have found later, in a way that a set of notecards or a bibliography doesn’t, because they seem more “final” and product oriented.   And these sites allow them to network and learn collaboratively from one another.

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.

Diigo is the most useful tool for take-it-with-you research. It not only organizes and tags bookmarks, it also lets you mark up Web pages as you would a paperback book--with sticky notes, highlights, and comments--then share those notes with others.

To use the highlight and find feature, you just type in the textbox that you use for normal searching but this time either click on the button for each word of the search term or the highlighter button. It sounds like a lot involved with the toolbar, but really once you start to use it, you will grow to love it. I mentioned that Diigo is not only a social bookmarking service, but also a social annotation service. Diigo lets you highlight any text on any site and bookmark the page saving the highlighted text. Once the bookmark is saved, the next time you visit the bookmarked page, you will still see the text you highlighted, but this time with a blue underline. You can save multiple highlights on a page and even save sticky notes to each highlighted text area that you saved. This is excellent because there are many times that I have wanted to keep a note of something specific on a site and couldn’t and later on forget why I bookmarked it in the first place. Now I can keep notes on pages so I know what I was thinking at the time. On top of all of this though is that you can set public sticky notes. Meaning that when a Diigo user is to set a note to public on a page, any other Diigo user will see the note as well when viewing it. I also should note that in order to save a public note, you must have atleast two friends to help cut down on abuse with notes on sites. Diigo has many other great features. One feature that caught my eye was the importing of bookmarks. Instead of importing a saved file to Diigo, it will actually open a popup listing all your bookmarks from your browser and let you import each on all at once or individually. It also tags them all by default using the tag, “Links” along with the name of the folder it was found in from your bookmarks directory. This is great because I don’t have to make any file or anything to import bookmarks. Another feature that I thought was interesting search page for Diigo. Diigo has searching in the interface itself, but unlike other services, it also has its own search page that lets anyone search Diigo (even if you aren’t a member). Instead of showing results in the Diigo’s website itself, it will show results on a page in a format much like Google’s which makes it a whole lot better, in my opinion. Another feature that Diigo has is friends. You can add friends to your bookmarks page so you can easily view their bookmarks when you want.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Until now, most people were not on the internet so naturally you got your programs on a disk…  now we’re seeing more and more web based applications, and Web 2.0.  If you don’t know what this is figure it out, try delicious, google docs, diigo, netvibes, wordpress…  point is everyone can create and sort the content, not just "webmasters"  the internet is an extension of our minds, we can’t leave it to corporations to create and organize the content for obvious reasons…  all corporations have their vested interests and see the public as consumers, they’d rather you buy something from them, doesn’t matter if its the best or in your best interest or good for your health, etc.  the web 2.0 movement has been mostly a public movement

Why Didn't I Think of That? Somethings make so much sense that I can't believe they're new. Such is the case with WebSlides by www.diigo.com <-- my favorite bookmarking and annotating and archiving and organizing and locating and so much more tool for quite a while now!

Judging by common bookmark tags, such as 'Web 2.0', the Diigo community is full of technically knowledgeable users. Still, we find it straightforward enough that a dedicated bookmarking newcomer shouldn't have a problem adopting Diigo as a research companion. Diigo is great for taking notes on Web pages and using them to collaborate with other users -- and since we started using Diigo, we've lost our appetite for Del.icio.us.

Diigo Diigo (Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff) is probably the most underrated least known about bookmarking services one the market today.  In addition to fantastic support for bookmarks, Diigo supports partial bookmarks called “Sticky Notes”.  The Sticky Note feature allows the user to select a section of a web page and bookmark the selection.  Another special feature that Diigo sports is its ability to forward new bookmarks to other bookmarking services making a transition to Diigo from another popular service less of an initial commitment.

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.

为了增强学生的学习兴趣，教师会不断地思考并改变陈旧的教学方式。追求教学形式的多样性，是激发学生学习热情，提高学习效率的重要措施。多媒体进入课堂，在一定程度上活跃了教室的气氛，整个教学过程变的有声有色。但随着多媒体教学方式的运用与发展，研究者发现大量的多媒体信息还是以填鸭式的方式灌输给学生。虽然转变了教学方式，但学生的互动性、参与性、自主学习与研究能力并没有得到很好的实现。Web2.0时代的Diigo工具可谓是促进多媒体教学发展的一座桥梁。基于传统的网络教学方式，利用Diigo的Highlight功能，教师将教学内容中的重点与难点标出，并在Sticky Note中添加详细的解释。 整个的网络课程不需要搭建特别的平台，仅基于教师的个人Blog就可以得以实现。课前预习、课上学习、课后复习都可以借助此课程达到一定的学习目的。关于某个有疑问的重点或难点，学生还可以添加回复，对此教师即可以单独进行辅导，也可以根据问题提出的频率，在课堂上进行专门的讲解。所以说，Diigo能有效地帮助教师改善教学内容，增强学生与教师之间的交流与互动。Webslides课程包、书签式网络课程也是丰富教学内容的很好方式。 （三）为师生提供便捷的交流平台 教师和学生在教学过程中都不可避免地会遇到很多令人困惑的问题。自主研究当然是不错的方式，但讨论交流才可以扩展思路，一个建议可能会带来新的思路。而且，与他人交流还可以学到许多新知识，新方法。关于教学或学习过程中的某一个问题，可以分享到众人的不同观点，整个过程就像一次头脑风暴，不断迸发出新的亮点。Diigo的群组功能，标注的回复功能为我们提供了不同的交流平台。教师可以针对某个学习内容建立一个组，以便学生更透彻的掌握科学知识。学生也可以针对某个难点建立一个组，让大家一起出谋划策，共同学习。并且，师生之间的沟通交流，加强了彼此间的了解，这将会使教学过程更加和谐顺畅。教师可以适当的对不同的讨论组进行管理，以促进整个教学过程更良性化的发展。 （四）提高学生独立思考、自主学习的能力 教育的目的不仅在于科学知识的传授，重点是培养学生的综合素质。例如学习能力、思考能力、创新能力等。Diigo恰好能在这些方面对学生进行锻炼。针对社会中的某些现象，学生利用Sticky Note发表自己的看法，并对他人的不同观点发表评论。在众多的言论中，辨别认同或反对的立场，从而锻炼学生辨别分析、独立判断的能力。表达不仅意味着与人分享，将阅读权限设置为私有，随时随地记下个人想法，促使自己积极、主动、独立的思考。而且学生可以定期梳理自己不同时期的想法，以发现观点的变化，思维的发展，并自我分析原因。利用Diigo，学生的学习兴趣被激发、学习的主动性相应增强，Web2.0时代的教育和学习理念也会适应性地变化和发展。 四、结束语 目前，Diigo正在发展之中，用户也不够广泛，Diigo在有些方面的功能还不是很完善。例如，添加好友的功能单一、部分功能的可配置项太少。但新的创意带来好的工具，好的工具一定会得到大众的认可。我们相信，在信息技术飞速发展的今天，像Diigo这样极具实用价值的Web2.0工具，随着用户的增多，Diigo在教育中运用将会逐步走向成熟，成为新时期教育工作者必备的网络工具之一。

I am constantly learning things about Diigo. It’s great. Did you know if you’re a user, you could highlight anything anywhere online and send your notes back to yourself? I wish I knew that the other day at work! It’s quite useful.

I annotated a few posts from my blog to try it out and I am impressed with how organized everything is. I never anticipated anything like this. I wonder, can other people see what I annotated? Can other people comment on my work and send me their revisions? Even if they don’t know me? Technology is advancing so rapidly I can barely keep up!