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Annette Lamb

Deep Thoughts Assignment - 37 views

assignment deep thoughts groups discussion

started by Annette Lamb on 14 Aug 11
  • Annette Lamb
    #1 Annette Lamb on 14 Aug 11
     
    Identify a peer's group under the Groovy Groups section of our class group. Contribute to an activity designed by a classmate. Then, share your experiences and thoughts about using Diigo on the Deep Thoughts forum in the class group.
  • Sean Robinson
    #2 Sean Robinson on 18 Nov 11
     
    Throughout this entire project I have wrestled with the Diigo technology on a number of platforms. I am not sure if I am the only one to have this experience but it has altered how I feel about this product as it only worked intermittently for me. In general, I really like the features but will it be enough for me to more away from delicious.com? Probably not, as I collect all sorts of links for my own interest and don't have a need to share these with others.
    Would I think about using this tool to do collaborative work? If the technology just worked then I think the answer would be yes because I really liked the idea of sharing links in groups, and the highlighting feature and sticky notes were helpful in getting clarification and insight on a website. I think this is where Diigo really shines. If I was going to work collaboratively on a piece of text, I would probably use Google docs as I think it does a better job of collaboratively editing, but if I wanted to make comments on a web page or highlight a webpage element then I think this could be a good tool.
    I wonder, now that I have learned about this product, do I have a business or personal need that this product would fill? And I find that the answer for me is no. I enjoyed learning and exploring its features, but this product is not a good fit in my day to day work, especially as it was so temperamental to work with.
  • Jesus Moya
    #3 Jesus Moya on 18 Nov 11
     
    This may be one site that I do not hold on too. I view Diigo as a just another bookmark manager. Sure, you could set it up to teach lessons, or share information, and not just annotate and bookmark websites, but I find the services it provides redundant. I've already set up my bookmarks on my browser (Chrome) and setting up a blog can replicate the sharing and discussion part of Diigo. The technology was very easy to use, but did take some time to learn. For example, I realized that I was bookmarking back to the main group post and not the topics. But after I got it figured out, it was easier to use. Having a Google account also replicates some of the functions of Diigo, such as syncing your bookmarks or creating an online space to share documents or create blogs. I don't think Diigo is for me, then.
  • christine plant
    #4 christine plant on 18 Nov 11
     
    This assignment was my first introduction to Diigo. I find it to be an interesting bulletin board of sorts for organizing thoughts, images, information, resources, and media. While I tend to keep information organized in a personal way that works for me, I can readily see the benefit of using technology like Diigo for collaboration. I can also see the obvious benefit to a computer user who uses different computers in the course of a day, week or project so that jump drives might be a little unnecessary. The downside to relying on technology for storing and organizing information is the risk of technical difficulties. Over the past week, I have been unable to access Diigo three times. Had I been desperate to retrieve information, or working against a deadline, I could see a real conflict for the user.

    As a collaborative tool, I can see the social aspect of Diigo working well with file- (or in this case, bookmark) sharing combining to make for a good user experience. The ability to make things private could be beneficial for developing thoughts until they are ready to be shared.

    I think Google Docs and email can accomplish the same results as collaboration with Diigo, but I created a few groups and joined a few groups to give it a solid opportunity to be useful. I tend to store images and organize them in Pinterest in a similar way to how I might catalog resources in Diigo, but I am still not totally convinced one way or the other.

    I don't care for the automatic floppy disk icon that appears on images everywhere (I have mostly noticed it on facebook) since I joined Diigo. I have inadvertently saved things to my Diigo library when I was attempting to zoom in on images. One of the Diigo groups I joined also tends to have a lot of posts that are advertisements - though I don't blame Diigo. I was sure to set up my groups as invitation only, and added in the group description some of the guidelines for member posts to avoid any unintended group activity.
  • Jonathan Gaskill
    #5 Jonathan Gaskill on 18 Nov 11
     
    I, for one, really like the concept of sharing and collaborating with this service. Showing people sites is one thing, but actually interacting and collaborating with people, say, patrons in classes at the library centralizes the information to either your library or your groups- a group can be created for specific situations, like particular classes one might teach at the library (digital photography, photo editing, social media, blogging, etc.), or links good for medical reference, legal reference, academic reference, etc. all in one place.
    There are plenty of problems- for sure the adverts are annoying and it is tricky to get accustomed to how this thing works. I don't know how possible it is to customize where bookmarks get posted- as it seems pointless to make everything private, but I did not necessarily find it necessary to see every single comment both I an others had to say about each collaboration- there ought to be an administrator privilege which allows someone to moderate or make conversations collapsible.
    There are a lot of groups, and an infinitely expandable realm of possibilities when it comes to improving the knowledge of the world around us. It is not just bookmarking, it is collaboration and interaction with the sites which are often used but rarely interacted with but often complained about or commented about in popular culture (facebook changes) and academia (the new factfinder2.census.gov interface). I am excited to try to use this in my programs at the library, my personal life and my future professional life. It is just the beginning.
  • Cassaundra Bash
    #6 Cassaundra Bash on 18 Nov 11
     
    I, like Sean, have had issues with getting Diigo to work as well as I'd like. And I, too, generally bookmark sites that I personally use but wouldn't necessarily need to share, such as the links to the state's ILL processes. These are usually addresses that are important in my professional duties but are too long or complicated or unintuitive for me to memorize. Right now, my teaching is limited to class visits and I'm generally forced into a 30-45 min. time slot in which to teach students how to use the library catalog and EBSCO databases. At this point in time, I don't see utilizing this site much in my current teaching.

    Having said that, I do have future plans to develop and push for an information literacy class, and if that should ever come about, I might find this site more useful in lesson planning, much like I used it for my website evaluation group. If I do get this class, or if I create an entire information literacy workshop (something like our high tech learning site, perhaps) then this would be much more practical in that environment. I would certainly consider using this or any other sharing site at that point, because that would add a more personal, interconnected dimension to the class, site, or unit.
  • Sabrina Stradtner
    #7 Sabrina Stradtner on 19 Nov 11
     
    If you heard a scream coming from Michigan City on Monday that was me. I got on Diigo and began to explore. Right away I discovered I could import my Delicious bookmarks. I was super excited because when Delicious was suppose to be going away I exported my bookmarks to a file to save for future use. I thought that I had found a new home for my bookmarks. Sadly when I looked for the file I could not find it. Hence the scream. It appears that I must have put the file in a very safe place where I would be sure to find it. On top of that it appears my Delicious account no longer exists :/ I used Delicious mostly when I was working as a genealogist. It was a great tool for bookmarking resources I thought would be useful in the future. It will be easy for me to find some of these and the blogs I had bookmarked. But I also used Delicious to bookmark pages that contained information about my own research. Such as someone's personal webpage with information about a family line I was researching. Because I often find such webpages by random chance it will be hard to remember them all. But Diigo has given me new hope.

    I like Delicious and Diigo because I can create bookmarks at work and access them at home or vice versa. My favorite feature is the ability to attach notes to bookmarks. Without a note the reason I bookmarked a specific website could be lost. Sometimes I find the answer to all of my family secrets at two in the morning. Without a note, three months later I would have no idea why that bookmark exists. I will likely keep using Diigo. I especially like the Diigolet add-on which makes bookmarking and note taking so easy.

    What I did not like about Diigo was the Help section. I had some issues at first figuring out how to function on this site and the Help section was not helpful at all. I think there is a lot of missing information and I hope over time that will be filled in. Overall I had a great experience on this site.
  • shumphreylib
    #8 shumphreylib on 19 Nov 11
     
    Having worked with Diigo as only an organization too, this assignment was really fun. I loved seeing what ideas the class came up with and what ways we use Diigo differently. I experimented with both private and public groups and found that the invite and accept process was pretty simple.

    I posted to Christine's Documentary film festival group. I had difficulty finding reviews for my first choice, Running the Sahara. Most of the reviews I found were user reviews and I wasn't sure that fit the assignment. So I went to choice #2, Urgh! A Music War. I was able to find a few reviews for this one, but had to search a few library catalogs to find a Dewey Call Number instead of just DVD Urgh. How did I find my first review, using one of Christine's links, www.documentaryfilms.net. And that's precisely how I see Diigo working. We share both where we go and can add what we think of the places we go with the annotations. Educators could use this in many ways, supply a list of links and have kids post stickies is a great use. It's sort of a wiki, in blog form with the way it evolves.

    I also had troubles with highlighting going away, losing annotations if I left the browser tab and other head scratching moments when using Diigo. But for people who are on computers at various locations it's awesome. Having your bookmarks wherever you need them. I even was able to see stuff on my phone and was surprised at how well I could navigate Diigo on my Droid.

    Google Chrome may be onto something with bookmark syncs but I'll stick with Diigo for now. I don't have access to Google Chrome everywhere like I do my Diigo bookmarks. And I see down below there is a Diigo Chrome Extension, which I hope works great because Google will control everything eventually....
  • Christina VanderGriend
    #9 Christina VanderGriend on 21 Nov 11
     
    Diigo seems like a really cool way to organize and keep track of resources you've used. At first, I thought it was just like Delicious or similar bookmarking websites but Diigo has a lot to offer. In particular, I love the fact that you can highlight and make notes on the screen and then share those notes with other users. This would be a great tool for a teacher who wants to draw students' attention to a particular item on a webpage or in a section of text.

    I looked at Sabrina's puppet-making group because I, too, am super stoked for the upcoming Muppet movie. She asked that we find a puppet-making tutorial online and make some note or suggestion on it. With that in mind, I found this site:
    http://diigo.com/0lc9l

    The tutorial I found is a how-to video for making marionettes out of dolls. I suggested making this a two-part project by first making your own doll from a simple pattern so that the marionette was entirely hand-made.

    To be honest, I didn't have a hard time getting Diigo to work for me but it seems to be optimized for Chrome, which is my preferred browser. When I switched to Safari, I had to adjust a little because some of the features were only available for premium users on Safari. I also have experience on quite a few other bookmarking sites so I was already familiar with the concept here, which I'm sure helped me to navigate the process with less confusion than I would have felt if I were unfamiliar with this type of service.
  • Holly Koster
    #10 Holly Koster on 22 Nov 11
     
    I went into Christina's Cooking School group and did her "Improve a Recipe" project. This is my recipe: http://diigo.com/0lcnq. Simple, but it works.

    I could see myself using Diigo. On the Experiments assignment, I made sure that I did a project I would actually use, just in case I decided I liked it. Others have commented on the lag time and I wonder if some of the things I thought didn't work are because the system was slow or if I really didn't do them right. It's quite possible that I redid things I didn't need to redo.

    Honestly, I found the Help feature here to be useless. Several times I would try a link and find a blank page with a title. Not helpful at all. So I kept exploring and eventually figured out what I was working on.

    I work mostly with children at the public library, so I don't know that I would use this with the children. But I could see using it to organize myself. I could also see it as a possibility for sharing ideas among the children's librarians in our library system. Although, we have a hard enough time getting some of them to understand going on our local network to open a file, so asking them to contribute to something online could be a bit... optimistic? It is a thought though.
  • Rona Plummer
    #11 Rona Plummer on 22 Nov 11
     
    This was my first time using Diigo. I have used other social bookmarking sites, like Delicious. I like the concept of annotating by highlighting and attaching sticky notes, but sometimes I had problems with getting the highlights to work. It is useful to be able to add bookmarks to a specific group or list. This makes it a great way to collect, share and do research. The Diigolet made it easy to bookmark websites. I can see how the option to mark something as Unread would be useful so you could come back to it later. This would be very useful in a classroom setting when students are working on a research project. The sticky note feature would also simplify the researching process.

    I really enjoyed looking at Groups made my others in the class. It gives you a good idea of what their interests are personally and professionally. I think this really reflects where Diigo can be useful. It is a great way to gain insight into other users.
  • Laura Brack
    #12 Laura Brack on 22 Nov 11
     
    I used Diigo once before for this class and it's a pretty neat tool. I hadn't explored the groups feature, so that was interesting. It would be a great place for programming librarians to collaborate on ideas.

    I participated in the Makers and Hackers group. I'd never heard of the term 'maker' like this and it was really neat to see different projects. I left a note on a YouTube page explaining why I liked it, and could leave another note near a linked video to show that they're related.

    This was really an interesting assignment.
  • kirkengaard
    #13 kirkengaard on 22 Nov 11
     
    I am somewhat ambivalent about Diigo at this time. I appreciate some of the mark-up tools that it provides; however, I would like to be able to click on link to access the page with the markup instead of generating an address for the annotated copy. Even so, I found myself tickled by the ability to highlight and annotate an e-document as though it were a paper copy. The ability to archive pages and protect them from the vagaries of the internet is also a potentially potent advantage.

    Diigo does seem to be a useful tool for organizing bookmarks. To that end, I found the list function to be convenient (because I am a compulsive organizer). I am often a little lazy and I tend to rely on browser bookmarks, but this system of organization is much more precise. It feels like a LibraryThing for web addresses.

    I am not yet certain about the social aspects yet. Perhaps I simply need to find the right group. Or perhaps I am too much a digital immigrant to recognize its true social networking potential. Having organized a group, it feels a little chaotic. Posts accumulate like a blog, but without the centralized planning that characterizes a blog. Ideally, I'd like to create a topic within a group and post links to that topic, but perhaps this level of organization is unnecessary. I do like the idea of creating a Diigo account for a particular group with a focused interest. It could serve a support function to a larger agenda.
  • Elissa Ellis
    #14 Elissa Ellis on 22 Nov 11
     
    Well, evidently I had used this site previous to this assignment, but not as in-depth. In the past, I have preferred to print out articles and information I have found on the internet because I need to highlight and make notes on what I read. This has been eye opening. I can truly see the benefits of using this tool. It is a way for me to save paper ( I always used scrap paper, but still!!) and still do what I feel comfortable with when it comes to online reading. It will still be something to get used to, but I do see myself moving this direction.

    I would have to say that it was not all fun. I had some trouble when I went back to a page I had started making notes on and when I went to the Diigo address, my new changes were there, but not the old ones. Then, nothing was there. I had a few moments of pure and utter frustration. In the end I got the address to show what I had wanted, but that was after typing and retyping about four times!!! When I watched the video for Diigo as an introduction, it showed that you could in fact take a screen shot. I really think it would be nice if that would be automatic. It would be convenient to go to my Diigo site and be able to see each "Diigoed" site I have made in true form. It shows the annotations you made, but not in the context of the text. I guess what I am saying is, I see many benefits to the website, but there are a few things I think could be made easier. The toolbars are definitely a great feature. They are well on their way to make a very user-friendly site.

    I added a recipe to Christina's Cooking School. I love the fact that you can join groups and add things. I know that there have to be other people out there searching for the same things I am searching for. This is a great way to come together in order to share common interests. I created a group for school librarians called School Library Programming. It is a way for school librarians to find out new and fresh ideas for their libraries. One of my topics involves encouraging recreational reading. This is something I am constantly struggling with. If the ideas are out there, why not share them!?! It is almost as if Diigo combines social bookmarking and blogging into one fantastic site.

    There is great potential here and I am looking forward to continuing to use this site. Great experience!
  • Austin Stroud
    #15 Austin Stroud on 23 Nov 11
     
    I joined Chris' allmusic group and did a search for a song and shared it with the group. Diigo was very easy to use, but I have discovered that highlighting and notes are a little trickier to do on a page that has its content made up entirely of links. You have to be careful not to click the link while highlighting or you will lose what you are trying to do. That was a problem with this music website in particular, and I had similar issues with Ivy Tech's pages that I used for my library's bookmarks.

    Sometimes the extension I added to Google Chrome did nothing when I clicked the bookmark link for Diigo. I gave up on a few websites that I had this problem on, so it must not like certain types of links. Ivy Tech's jobs website at http://jobs.ivytech.edu was one that Diigo did not let me bookmark, so I bookmarked the HR page instead.

    I love the ease of being able to bookmark and reference links later straight from my web browser. I cannot see myself going to the Diigo website itself very often, so the extension and bookmarking as I browse is the thing I like the best about Diigo. I had used Diigo before with the Brownsburg Public Library, as I mentioned in another posting for this assignment. It is easy to forget and get lazy on, and that is sort of what happened with our work account at the library that the reference staff was to share.

    Diigo in general is something I would use again and recommend to others, and I am glad I had this chance to explore it some more than I had before.

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