12 Reasons Teachers should use Diigo

What is Diigo?

Diigo stands for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff.” It is a social bookmarking program that allows you to save your ‘favourites’ online, so that they can be accessible from any computer with an internet connection. However, Diigo does much more than this.

As you read on the web, as well as bookmarking websites, you can also highlight parts of web pages that are of particular interest to you. Or, you can attach sticky notes to specific parts of web pages. These highlights and sticky notes are persistent – whenever you return to the original web page, you will see your highlights and sticky notes superimposed on the original page, just what you would expect if you highlighted or wrote on a book!

The ‘social’ part of the bookmarking program is also very useful. With every Diigo user tagging and annotating pages online, the Diigo community has collectively created a wonderful repository of quality content, filtered and annotated by the community, on almost any subject you may be interested in.

For example, if you would like to find popular resources on e-learning, searching Diigo can probably get what you want in less time than using search engines, and you may also gain insights from other users.

For more information, go to http://www.diigo.com/about , or dive right in and sign up. After reading the reasons here today, you will definitely be convinced of the productivity and time-saving power of this great online tool.

So…onto the 12 reasons every teacher should use Diigo.

1. Diigo provides a free, efficient, effective and reliable way to save and organise your favourite websites, online articles, blog posts, images and other media found online.
   How do I bookmark? Go to here for a short tutorial. The first thing you need to do to begin bookmarking is either download the Diigo toolbar, or if you don’t want a full toolbar, download the Diigolet.
2. Diigo provides an outliners feature that allows you to share carefully selected bookmarked websites with your students.
   Adding bookmarks to outliners is easy. Check out this tutorial for a guide.
3. Diigo has tools that encourage students to collaborate with others to analyse, critique and evaluate websites.
   Take advantage of the Teacher Console to manage student accounts – with no student email addresses needed. Create groups for your students to work within, and have them share and review resources as a part of their research.http://help.diigo.com/teacher-account/faq
4. Diigo provides opportunities for students to apply higher level thinking skills while researching and gathering information.The table below is taken from Choosing Web2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World by Pam Berger and Sally Trexler.
5. Diigo allows you to gain access to the ‘collective intelligence’ of the internet.By joining groups of like minded users, you are automatically able to access all of the bookmarks that other members of the group have chosen to save. The many, many users of Diigo all saving to their accounts adds up to a lot of great websites identified, tagged and reviewed – much more than one single person could ever identify in a reasonable timeframe!
6. Diigo allows you to develop your own professional learning network (PLN).
7. Diigo provides a forum for teachers and students to discuss areas of share interest, or a particular online website or resource using the ‘topics’ function within groups.
8. Use Diigo to provide visual access to websites you have collected using the built in program ‘webslides’.http://slides.diigo.com/widget/slides?sid=36866
9. Use Diigo’s advanced tools to link its power to blogs and RSS. Lists of similar websites that you have created can easily be posted onto a blog by using the ‘post to blog’ button.
   
   
10. Use Diigo tools to enhance professional reading and save time creating summaries of online posts.
11. Access your information from any computer, or even your iPhone or iPad!
    The free Diigo app can be downloaded from the iTunes store and you can be saving as you go!
12. Enjoy the spare time you save through your increased organisation of online resources and the power of Diigo!Image with thanks to: http://www.dianechamberlain.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/sleeping-dog.jpg

Want to learn more? The following links may help…

Getting started with a Teacher Account:

http://help.diigo.com/teacher-account/getting-started

Introduction to Diigo:

http://21ctools.wikispaces.com/Diigo

From TeleGatherer to TelePlanter with Diigo:

http://www.edsupport.cc/mguhlin/share/index.php?n=Anthology.Diigoway