Website – App Review
To skip the information and see my review click here
Name
Address
Grade Level
All
Subject
All
Purpose
Finding and saving resources for use in class and personal
development
- Join or create groups based on interest and need
Easily share a list of bookmarks for use in class
Easily create groups for the students in your class
- Note taking, individual and social
- Shared research
Student and teacher bookmarks
- Private or public
Easily see how many other people have bookmarked a site and
their public notes
Create your own network or
groups of peers or students
- Share and store resources
- Learn what and how other teachers are using what they find on the Internet
- Quickly share to blogs or create an RSS feed of great links with annotations
Lots of great apps for browsers and mobile devices
Age requirements
13 and up, but with educator accounts you can create a class
group that allows individual students anonymous accounts monitored by you.
TOS
The TOS is mostly about not using Diigo to infringe on other
people’s rights.
Content/Activity Prohibited.
1. is patently offensive and promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual; 2. harasses or advocates harassment of another person; 3. exploits people in a sexual or violent manner; 4. contains nudity, violence, or offensive subject matter;14. includes a photograph of another person that you have posted without that person's consent;
Cost
Free - with paid option
What I think
The power of Diigo.
Where would I as a teacher use Diigo
For a power internet user like me Diigo is an indispensable tool. Many years ago I used to copy all my bookmarks by hand onto a floppy disk so that when I bought a new computer I wouldn’t have to start over from scratch. Then I learned to sync bookmarks with Firefox and I thought that was great. Still, I had this looooooooooooong list of bookmarks and most of them ended up being dead links.
Then I found Diigo. I imported all of my saved bookmarks and never looked back. Now, anytime I want to save a website I can, from any computer. If I want to find that bookmark I can from any computer. (yes, I’m assuming internet access why else would I be looking for bookmarks)
I know you don’t have over 2,000 bookmarks like me, you don’t need this service. Ah, but it gets better. What’s that you say, “2,000 bookmarks how do you find what you want?” Let me explain.
First the bookmarlet was invented.
I especially like the Chrome boomarlet because everytime I sign into my email it automatically loads, but that is a different story. With the bookmarklet I can quickly add a page into my Diigo bookmarks with tags.
Most pages suggest tags, occasionally I’ll add my own. Then a few months later when I say to myself, “What was that site on children’s math video games?” I’ll just go back to Diigo and search those terms.
Sometimes I have to play with the search terms, mostly because I don’t think about them before I add them. The nice thing is I can go back and add or delete the “tags” as often as I like. Diigo is also nice enough to suggest related tags, based on the other tags that are in the results that came up.
My world has become a world of search. I don’t remember everything I see, instead I take notes of everything. I add descriptions and tags, then later when I need to go back I can usually find what I need.
What is that you are saying, “This is all nice and good for a geek like yourself who spends his life trolling the interweb for resources, but for the rest of us, we still don’t see the purpose.” For that I say Diigo gets even better. I can highlight and take notes right there on the web page, then share those notes with anyone.
I have 4 choices of colors to highlight. I can add a sticky note right to the page. I can choose to make my notes public or private. Then I can share the page with anyone. Check it out here http://diigo.com/0srzn
Wait, it gets even better. I don’t actually spend all of my free time trolling the internet to find educational resources. What I’ve actually done is join some groups in Diigo. There the members of the groups find and share the resources we use with each other.
All those cool looking highlights and notes. They show up in the group.
I’ve used groups not only to find great resources for the classroom, but also as a shared study tool in classes. And that brings us to the final bit of awesomeness for Diigo in education. The educator account. http://help.diigo.com/teacher-account/getting-started
With an educator account, (free), you can enroll your students into a class group. Students who are doing research online can post their bookmarks and notes to the class group or to sub-groups you set up in the group. Further, for those teachers who have younger students Diigo will automatically set up anonymous students for your class. You can send in a class list and they will create accounts for each student. The best part is the class list can be names or it can simply be user names such as student101. No email account necessary because the accounts are set-up for your class not the students.
Wait, there is more. I’m really trying hard not to blow you away with too much information. For the rest of the cool stuff that you can do with Diigo, free and paid, you just have to go explore the site.
Where would I as a teacher use Diigo
- As a tool for personal use.
- As a tool for professional use.
- As a tool for use in the classroom.
For a power internet user like me Diigo is an indispensable tool. Many years ago I used to copy all my bookmarks by hand onto a floppy disk so that when I bought a new computer I wouldn’t have to start over from scratch. Then I learned to sync bookmarks with Firefox and I thought that was great. Still, I had this looooooooooooong list of bookmarks and most of them ended up being dead links.
Then I found Diigo. I imported all of my saved bookmarks and never looked back. Now, anytime I want to save a website I can, from any computer. If I want to find that bookmark I can from any computer. (yes, I’m assuming internet access why else would I be looking for bookmarks)
I know you don’t have over 2,000 bookmarks like me, you don’t need this service. Ah, but it gets better. What’s that you say, “2,000 bookmarks how do you find what you want?” Let me explain.
First the bookmarlet was invented.
I especially like the Chrome boomarlet because everytime I sign into my email it automatically loads, but that is a different story. With the bookmarklet I can quickly add a page into my Diigo bookmarks with tags. Most pages suggest tags, occasionally I’ll add my own. Then a few months later when I say to myself, “What was that site on children’s math video games?” I’ll just go back to Diigo and search those terms.
Sometimes I have to play with the search terms, mostly because I don’t think about them before I add them. The nice thing is I can go back and add or delete the “tags” as often as I like. Diigo is also nice enough to suggest related tags, based on the other tags that are in the results that came up.
My world has become a world of search. I don’t remember everything I see, instead I take notes of everything. I add descriptions and tags, then later when I need to go back I can usually find what I need.
What is that you are saying, “This is all nice and good for a geek like yourself who spends his life trolling the interweb for resources, but for the rest of us, we still don’t see the purpose.” For that I say Diigo gets even better. I can highlight and take notes right there on the web page, then share those notes with anyone.
I have 4 choices of colors to highlight. I can add a sticky note right to the page. I can choose to make my notes public or private. Then I can share the page with anyone. Check it out here http://diigo.com/0srzn
Wait, it gets even better. I don’t actually spend all of my free time trolling the internet to find educational resources. What I’ve actually done is join some groups in Diigo. There the members of the groups find and share the resources we use with each other.
All those cool looking highlights and notes. They show up in the group.
I’ve used groups not only to find great resources for the classroom, but also as a shared study tool in classes. And that brings us to the final bit of awesomeness for Diigo in education. The educator account. http://help.diigo.com/teacher-account/getting-started
With an educator account, (free), you can enroll your students into a class group. Students who are doing research online can post their bookmarks and notes to the class group or to sub-groups you set up in the group. Further, for those teachers who have younger students Diigo will automatically set up anonymous students for your class. You can send in a class list and they will create accounts for each student. The best part is the class list can be names or it can simply be user names such as student101. No email account necessary because the accounts are set-up for your class not the students.
Wait, there is more. I’m really trying hard not to blow you away with too much information. For the rest of the cool stuff that you can do with Diigo, free and paid, you just have to go explore the site.
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