BP9-Web 2.0 #2 Diigo Bookmarking

Figure 1. Diigo Home Page, Los Angeles (n.d.). Source: diigo.com

It would be easy to dismiss Diigo as yet-another social bookmarking tool, but that would be a big mistake. Diigo's highlighting, bookmarking and site sharing tools are a subset of features in a rich collaborative application that puts information discovery and the writable Web at the center of discussions among colleagues, friends, and like-minded people. Diigo represents a move to maturity in the Web 2.0; it is a business tool, leveraging social models to deliver real value to its users. Educators can use Diigo to share resources with each other, as well as their students.

If you aren’t familiar with it, Diigo is a social bookmarking tool with extra features like highlighting and adding sticky notes. Daily bookmarks posts can be created automatically with Diigo; any time you see a quote from a site in you can use Diigo bookmarks highlights feature.

They also have something called Webslides that allows you to create a “tour” of webpages based on your bookmarks.

Diigo has all of the basic social bookmarking features. You can bookmark any site, add a description and tags, and allow others to comment on your bookmarks. Now, remember, Diigo isn’t built specifically for bookmarking but for annotation. With that said, you can attach highlighted text and notes to any bookmark and even simultaneously bookmark to other social bookmarking services, such as Del.icio.us, Blinklist, Shadows, RawSugar, and more. Why would Diigo allow you to bookmark to other social bookmarking services? If I had to guess it’s simply because many people are already comfortable with services they use, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need Diigo for its annotation. I can use Diigo for annotating a page and then bookmark it to Diigo and Del.ico.us and because the notes are saved to Diigo, the next time I go to that website from my Del.icio.us bookmarks, the notes will be there. You don’t have to use Diigo for its bookmarking - entirely optional. You may also import your browser or Del.icio.us bookmarks to Diigo and export them when needed. Publicly saved bookmarks can be found in the community section along with a tag cloud to navigate through them.

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 resources. I’m hoping to convince all the core teachers to set up a group page for their classes, and organize their book marks there!