I personally think social bookmarking is one of the key areas of growth both on the internet as a whole and in education, and I’m really excited about Diigo’s product.  They’ve been trying out lots of new features and the offering has been getting more than robust.

The outstanding social bookmarking and annotating application, Diigo, has announced the release of Diigo Education.

Diigo Education has the following features: Teacher accounts must be approved Personalized Teacher Console A teacher can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation) Students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and annotations, and group forums. To protect the privacy of students, student accounts have special settings which only allow their teachers and classmates to contact them and access their personal profile information. Ads presented to student account users are limited to education-related sponsors. Educators, especially those in K-12 settings where Diigo is blocked by Internet filters, will benefit from this version. I strongly recommend you apply for a free Diigo Educator account and/or check out the FAQ and Getting Started tutorial.

In short, it allows teachers to create students accounts without the need for email, something that is typically a stumbling block for many Web 2.0 sites given that many younger students do not have email addresses.

"Students on Diigo? Isn't that a social networking site?"Yes, it is, but safegaurds have been put in place with the student accounts that limit the social aspects of the program.

Diigo definitely has a place in education. Envision a group of students working on a Web-based research project: Not only can they cite the pages they’ve used, they can also have conversations about resources on the very pages they are discussing. And to take it a step further, the students’ teacher can join the group, view how the students are using the Web resources, and comment on their note-taking -- right on the sticky notes. As the site states, “Diigo is about Social Annotation.”

Diigo let´s you bookmark, highlight and sticky-note the Internet! A really remarkable research tool that should be used by every teacher and student worldwide! > What´s really exciting is that you can share these annotations by making them "public" with everyone using Diigo or even create/join a group. This means if you use Diigo and visit a website I highlighted some text and made a sticky note about - YOU CAN SEE IT TOO:) > I just created the > Education Revolutionaries Group > at Diigo: > "This Diigo Group is all about new and innovative education solutions on the Internet. Search, bookmark, highlight and sticky-note the world of online education together with us. Let´s Rock´N´Roll!" > You can > join the > Education Revolutionaries Group > if you like :) Everyone interested in education is welcome! > Kudos to Jim > for making me aware of this killer tool for research - you > won´t believe it but there are people out there never heard of Diigo > before! I knew one of them - me ; ) And > Kudos to you Clay > for making the > cool Diggo video. >

now I use the Diigo browser tool because it is so much better at annotating, archiving and linking to other communities - in fact Diigo has transformed my research recently because of its amazing level of functionality. This is another facet of working with web 2.0 - if I find something supercedes and is superior to other tools I won’t hesitate to ditch those and migrate to the newer development.

Diigo is a particularly smart tool in that it enables me to drill down to information I want and annotate it online quickly and dynamically.

A powerful Social Annotation and Research Tool - DIIGO! Well indeed Diggo is the coolest tool I have ever come across on the web2.0 scenario. It is a social annotation tool, social book mark tool and a online notes. Fits good to the best researchers online, it is a team tool, that leverages the time spent online. You do not waste a single minute and not waste the time spent in finding data and loosing it. Find it, mark it, send it, store it, import it!! surprising, this is all accomplished by a single tool and it is so much under rated.

With Diggo you can be rest assured you have the data saved and sent in seconds! Once your fellow researcher (or a friend) gets online on the same page, knowing or by chance, he can see that you have left a message for him. All you need is, both of you will have to install the Firefox/Internet Explorer/Flock/Opera browser toolbars. These toolbars will make sure both of you do not note the same or miss an important data.

Not only researchers, or known friends, but also strangers with same interest can make use of (rather exploit) this tool and do wonders. Say for example a bird watching community is on the prowl for a rare bird, or the very famous Flamingos, they all land up in a page that has abundance of information about the Flamingos, they can mark certain text in the page and leave a comment. Say a professor is leaving a comment about the Flamingos, and their migratory pattern, the others can see this note, respond to it! Later people with the same tool (Diigo toolbar) come to the page can see the conversation that has happened on the web, and note that this page is quite popular.

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: Once they start their web-related search, Diigo, an add-on extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer, allows students to highlight text and post sticky-notes directly onto webpages, then share their comments within the group. Others can add their own comments to the note. Selected text is archived to a "my bookmarks" page, along with the comments and a copy of the website. Students can collaborate within the bookmarks site or on the individual websites. Diigo supports RSS feeds, allowing teachers to follow student progress. The more I use this tool, the more I'm convinced it ought to be integral to every research project. It allows students to actively connect with the information they're reading--to question, annotate and infer. All in collaboration with their group. How amazing is that???