Web 2.0: Diigo and Social Bookmarking


Diving into Diigo

To kick off this week, I created a Diigo account for myself, joined our class "Group" and dove into the world of social bookmarking. I've used various bookmarking tools before to save and organize data I find online. My favorites are the Chrome bookmarks extension, which I can use across all my devices (personal computer, work computer and cell phone) and the OneNote Clipper extension that allows me to easily import web content into OneNote notebooks, where I can save, annotate or share it with colleagues or students.

The world of "social" bookmarking beyond this is a new discovery for me! I'm not terribly active on site like Pinterest -- although based on the discussion board in my class this week, I should probably look it more. In signing up for my Diigo account, I also installed the Chrome extension for Diigo, making it much easier to bookmark, save, highlight and annotate content I found on the web without having to constantly login to my Diigo account.

I attempted to playtest the Diigo educator account this week as well. However, despite applying for it on Monday, I haven't been granted one as yet. I did investigate the benefits of an educator account, and I think it would be essential for potentially using Diigo with my middle school students because it would allow me to add student account that do not collect personal information, a COPPA requirement for any student under the age of 13.

Usability and FUNctionality of Diigo 

One aspect of Diigo that I loves was being able to highlight and comment on specific quotes or paragraphs within more complex articles. This allowed me to really DIG into the content -- evaluating and bookmarking the essential information and gold nuggets I found rather than just saving the link without any analysis or context. This type of deeper dive into the information sharing aspect of Diigo would make it a formative tool for advanced thinkers and collaborators. Using it in my grad class, for example, was a perfect application, where I got to collaborate with other tech-savvy educators. I can think of several applications that would work at the college and high school level too.

A great example I found of successfully using Diigo with high school students was described in an superb wiki article by Bill Ferriter that I annotated and highlighted in Diigo: https://diigo.com/0rq5xo

However, the usability in Diigo is not intuitive. Several other educators who tested it this week commented on how much less engaging and user-friendly it was compared to other social bookmarking tools they used, like Pinterest. I agree that the graphics and interface would do not seem like they would appeal to my middle school students. While Diigo does have an option in its educator account to make it COPPA compliant for students under 13, I don't know that it would be my first choice for my middle school classrooms. While functional for shared analysis, the text-heavy interface and lack of intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) design simply lack the fun and engaging vibe I seek for middle school Web 2.0 technology.

Diigo Alternatives?

In light of these aspects of Diigo, I decided to investigate potential social bookmarking alternatives that would be more engaging and user-friendly in my classroom. I had several false starts. For instance, in one article dating from 2013, all 5 of the 5 best social bookmarking sites for education no longer existed. For teachers attempting to curate resources that can be used from year to year, having a social bookmarking site that fail the test of time is not a reassuring concept.

I did find some interesting-looking alternatives to Diigo that might be a little more user-friendly.


  • I have not used Wakelet in my classroom yet, but I was introduced to it by a grad school classmate, and I'm looking forward to using it! It seems like the perfect tool for bookmarking, collaborating, creating collections, sharing them with students and inviting students to create share and comment on their own and each other's collections in a true collaborative social bookmarking experience! It seems much more user-friendly than Diigo. Students can be added individually or they can login using their school Microsoft or Google accounts. It has integrations with Google classroom and Microsoft teams as well as private join codes or QR codes to make using it in the classroom easier. I can't wait to use this with my students!

  • Padlet is one of my favorite kid-friendly social sharing and bookmarking technologies. I've used this with students as young as elementary-age (3rd-4th grades) with much success and engagement! Teachers can set up secure classrooms for their students and use links or QR codes to make sharing (both original content and resources from the web) super easy. There are options to allow commenting and "likes" or not, which is helpful if you are concerned with the controlling the popularity contests that many students are sensitive to in online environments. Unfortunately, Padlet recently increased their pricing.


  • Dotstorming allows for lots of collaboration and group brainstorming with sticky notes, voting boards and even shared collages and whiteboards that multiple users can edit at a time. Here's a YouTube video detailing ways Dotstorming can be used for group brainstorming in the classroom.

  • Lino is a virtual cork board that allows sticky notes, links, images, videos and comments to be shared in a very visual context. My intuition is that it is probably not as useful for in-depth collaboration on documents, for example, but an engaging tool for brainstorming and ideation.

  • Flipboard is a tool that seems more industry-focused than strictly education, but it may have potential applications in the classroom. As outlined in this article, "Back to School: Six Ways Educators Use Flipboard", this resource can be used to compile news feeds, websites, articles, videos, podcasts and more, and can easily be shared with students, parents or colleagues. This seems more feed-based and not as collaborative as I would want, so it might be great for generating ideas and staying up to date on the latest new and discoveries, but it's not my first choice for collaborative content-building.

  • Another resource I found that seems less engaging was LiveBinders. Looking at some examples from educators who posted their LiveBinders, much of the content seemed to just be digitized (mostly scanned) versions of class binders, full of notes and worksheets, but lacking the integration of Web 2.0 resources and therefore a simple substitution-level technology of the SAMR model. While it allows some commenting and highlighting, I wouldn't consider this redefining use of social bookmarking.



For other educators reading this, I'd love to hear about the tools you do (or don't) recommend using for social bookmarking in the classroom! 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Web 2.0: Continuing the Journey

I've always considered learning to be a lifelong journey. If I'm not learning, exploring, expanding my skillset, pushing my boundaries and trying new things, I'm not living my best life. In this vein, I will certainly be continuing my exploration of Web 2.0 (and 3.0) technology and beyond well past the completion of this course.  Conferences and Conventions: I love the education and networking that happens when energetic, knowledgeable, motivated people get together and idea-swap! When choosing conferences and conventions to attend, I look for ones in areas of interest or potential future interests and prioritize ones with hands-on, workshop-style events -- I feel like a learn the most from these and I get to see the teaching methods modeled more realistically than in a lecture-style conference.  My Network: One of the great things about loving my job is that I talk about it a lot. Weddings, class reunions, kids birthday parties, random people I run into in line a the coffe...
Read more

Online Learning: Course Management Systems

Image
What is a Course Management System? According to the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching : A  course management system  (CMS) is a collection of software tools providing an online environment  for course interactions. A CMS typically includes a variety of online tools and environments, such as: An area for faculty posting of class materials such as course syllabus and handouts An area for student posting of papers and other assignments A gradebook where faculty can record grades and each student can view his or her grades An integrated email tool allowing participants to send announcement email messages to the entire class or to a subset of the entire class A chat tool allowing synchronous communication among class participants A threaded discussion board allowing asynchronous communication among participants So, how is this different from a Learning Management System? I'm still trying to figure that out, and there seems to be a lot of overlap in the definitions. Exploring CMS...
Read more

Playtesting Assignment 1: Blogs

     In this first playtesting assignment, I explored several versions of blogging and vlogging in the context of playtesting the technology for use in education. 1. I started by testing several different blogging websites and formats. Blogging platforms such as Weebly, Wix and Wordpress were easy to access and sign up for, but included a lot of ads in the free platforms. I wasn't willing to pay for the upgraded versions, so I continued searching for other platforms. I also wanted to experiment with video blogging (or vlogging) which wasn't easily available via these platforms.  2. I decided to move forward with the Google-based "Blogger" platform because it integrated with other Google products and allowed me to post blogs without ads. This affords   the learner a cleaner and less distracting technology landscape without advertising. It also affords me the opportunity to incorporate files via my Google drive to enhance my blog posts and add depth and complexity...
Read more