Talkin' 'bout my cerebration.

Diigo – social bookmarking with a dash of social networking.  I have migrated to use this service primarily instead of Delicious for a single significant reason.  Before I outline these, let me explain the benefits of social bookmarking in general and Diigo specifically.

Social bookmarking allows others to view and search your bookmarks.  Why is this a benefit?  If I trust someone, then searching through their bookmarks on a specific search term will be more effective than searching through a global search engine.  Shift this focus to education, and I can provide a similar service for my students.  They can search through my bookmarks and be confident the sites I’ve tagged I already feel are worthwhile.

Diigo allows users to join groups, and share bookmarks through a notification system to other users within the group.  It is through Diigo that I have discovered the OZ/NZ teacher group, an active and sharing community of educators.

Diigo supports educator accounts, which protects student identities from all users.  This means they can see each other’s bookmarks, and their teacher’s bookmarks.  All other users cannot see into this private group.

Diigo allows highlighting of web pages, and this highlighting remains when viewed through Diigo log in.  Accompanying this is commenting.  This functionality allows me as a teacher to highlight and annotate web pages for students to view.  I can then house a discussion forum within Diigo responding to the stimulus (although I choose to house these discussions in a Learning Place Project Room).  This is the key functionality that convinced me to move from Delicious.

I have found Diigo enhances student research, and education within my classes.  I encourage you, if you have not already, join Diigo.