Social bookmarking – for teachers and students

What is social bookmarking?

The days of keeping your bookmarks / favourites locked up in your browser are over. You can import them to one of many online bookmarking services, this means that you can share them and add to them from any computer or device.  Best of all, you won’t lose them ever again. Students can also benefit from your links. Simply give them the link to the relevant keyword. Here is an example, all my links regarding World War 2 on Diigo: https://www.diigo.com/user/vanweringh/WW2

I prefer Diigo as an online bookmarking tool (see below), but there are some other options:

• Delicious
• Evernote

Why I love Diigo:

• Diigo is a social bookmarking, research, and knowledge sharing tool.
• You can get plugins that allow you to quickly bookmark a site.
• The highlighting tool works really well, handy for long sites so you can skim them later. Diigo also allows you to put the highlights together.
• You can share your Diigo links on Delicious.
• If you “favourite” a Tweet in Twitter, it automatically converts to a link in Diigo (this is possibly my most liked feature of Diigo. Here are my Favourited Tweet links: https://www.diigo.com/user/vanweringh/ViaTwitter?type=all&sort=updated)

What Does Diigo Do?

Diigo allows you to take personal notes and highlight text information on web pages just as you would on a piece of paper. You can then bookmark and save this information for further review, while adding tags to keep everything organized.

Breakdown of Features & Tools

Highlighting – If you are reading an article or web page and find particular information worth noting or pointing out, Diigo allows you to digitally highlight the data just as if you had your own yellow highlighter. This information is automatically saved so anytime you come back to that web page the information will always be highlighted.

Taking Notes – Diigo also allows you to take notes on a web page similarly to the way in which you would add a sticky note to a paper document. You can add your own notes and move them to anywhere on the web page. You see an unobtrusive balloon that expands when rolled over with the mouse to reveal all the notes and comments, including who made the comment and at what time.

Bookmarking & Saving

After you have made any highlights or notes that you would like, you can also bookmark the page you are on. As you bookmark the page, Diigo allows the ability to add tags to help keep everything organized and provide easy access and retrieval.

Also, when you bookmark with Diigo, you are actually doing two things: you are saving the URL for the web page you are on, and you are also saving a cached image of your page so that you always have a copy of the original page, including notes and highlights, even if the URL becomes broken or the content of the page is changed.

Each bookmark you save will give you the direct URL, any tags you have added, when the bookmark was added, how many other Diigo users have bookmarked that page, the notes and highlights you made, and a link to the cached image.

Based on source: http://www.rcgov.org/pdfs/Library/Diigo_Description.pdf

Getting started

• Go to www.diigo.com and sign up.
• Go to your browser and backup all your favourites/bookmarks to a file. (Internet Explorere > FILE > IMPORT/EXPORT). Find the file named “bookmark.htm” on your computer. Go to http://www.diigo.com/tools/import_all and import your bookmarks. Be sure to choose your options like adding a tag or Public / Private.
• Download the “diigolet” for your browser. This little “script” allows you to quickly add bookmarks to Diigo.
• Start playing and bookmarking.
• Sign up for groups Make sure you choose the option of only receiving an update email once a week, or none at all, otherwise you might be emailed everyday with updates to that group.
  Also, choose the big groups, with lots of members and activity; they are generally the best ones.
• 10 reasons to use Diigo: http://www.ictineducation.org/home-page/2009/11/2/10-reasons-to-use-diigo.html
• Ilja’s bookmarks, as an example: https://www.diigo.com/profile/vanweringh