Social Bookmarking

I just finished reading this article, Social Bookmarking for Teachers on Educational Technology and Mobile Learning.  So I thought I would share how I use Diigo.

What is Diigo?

At the surface, Diigo is simply an online, or cloud-based, bookmark service.  This in and of itself is very handy.  How many times have you bookmarked something on your home computer and needed that bookmark on your school computer, iPad or second computer.  With Diigo, all of your bookmarks are accessible 24/7 on any computer that is linked to the internet.

Diigo is so much more than just a bookmarking service

1. Tags.

I love tagging!  Tagging has made it so much easier for me to find those web articles I saved or notes I have saved in Evernote.  What is tagging you ask?  When I bookmark a website I always label it with a tag.  A tag is word or phrase the describes the website or article you are reading.  Why tag?  When you go to the Diigo website you can search all of your tags to find all the websites pertaining to the topic of your tag.

For example, this summer I ran a workshop on flipping your class for my fellow teachers.  Well, as I was researching or whenever I came across an interesting article or link I would bookmark it using Diigo and add the tag "flipping workshop".  When it came time to put together my workshop I simply typed "flipping workshop"in the tag search and Presto! there were all of my websites and articles.

I also use tagging with my Evernote account.  All of my notes in Evernote have tags and I use them the same way.  By the way, Evernote has a very handy web clipper that allows you to save websites.  I have not used that function much but I can see the benefits of using it.  If I have not put so much into Diigo and I didn't find it so easy, I might have learned more about the Evernote web clipper.

2. Diigolet.

Diigolet is a shortcut that you can add to your favorites bar in your web browser.  Once you click the Diiigolet button a handy little shortcut bar appears.  It has everything: a highlighter, bookmark, sticky notes, etc.  (Below is a screenshot.)

You can use the highlighter to remind yourself about the key elements of the site.  The sticky notes are great because you can write notes to yourself or others.  The Diigolet is installed on every computer I work on.  It also makes it easy to access your Diigo account.

3.  Sharing

The last thing I will mention is the sharing.  I honestly still have not fully utilized this function yet.  You can share with your colleagues or students a single website or a list of websites.  I have been building a list of flipping websites for my fellow teachers to help them get started with the process of flipping.  I can simply share the list with anyone who is interested.  I know there is more to sharing but I have not fully explored it yet.  

As I said, Diigo is very cool little tool that helps you to organize and manage all of the website and online articles.  It makes research easy to perform and easy to share.

Thanks