Diigo, Social Bookmarking

Today I registered for an account and explored the wonderful world social bookmarking through the website Diigo http://www.diigo.com/index. The whole idea of social bookmarking is new to me. I spent a good deal of time searching the site and checking out the features available. What I found was that social bookmarking is a great way to mark important information, make notes, and even share the information with someone else through social networking.

Who would have thought before Web 2.0 that websites would have the capability of providing the users with access to make changes or add information to the world-wide-web?  The days of “browsing only” are gone! The web is accessible to anyone now and users are able to share what they know or have found with anyone, anywhere!  

What I kept thinking about as I added articles to my library was that I could share the information on merit pay that I found with a classmate.  We are working on a merit pay project together and this site is a great example of how we can share information that we find. The highlighting tool will be especially helpful in noting the important aspects of the articles or information bookmarked.  I can’t wait to share my new bookmarks with my classmate!

Here is the link to my Diigo library: http://www.diigo.com/user/aheflebower

This site would be a wonderful tool for teachers to use in the classroom to engage students in learning how to identify the important information of an article, how to work with classmates, and how to organize information. According to the ISTE.NETS.T standards, this type of activity would comply with standard 3, Model Digital-Age Work and Learning.  The activity fulfills this standard because it involves the use of digital tools to gather information for research and allows the students to work with peers or others to incorporate the use of technology into learning.

During this exercise I also learned about browser add-ons. It never occurred to me that all of the small icons I had listed on my tool bar were add-ons.  These add-ons make things a little easier to get to on the web, especially since there are sites that I frequent quite a bit throughout the day. It is so much easier to click on the add-on button and not have to type the URL in every time I need to change websites. Now that I know about them, I can surely state that I use them quite frequently. There are many buttons on my toolbar as shown below.  My choice browser is Internet Explorer.  I’ve always seemed to use that browser and occasionally use Mozilla Firefox when I run into trouble or can’t access something. 

I’m still not expert at social bookmarking, but I am going to keep trying to add more to my library and organize it to be useful for anyone.