IT 6740: Review of Diigo

What is Diigo?
Diigo is a social bookmarking and social annotation tool. According to the Diigo website, “If you browse or read a lot on the web, we believe you will find Diigo indispensable. Diigo is two services in one -- it is a research and collaborative research tool on the one hand, and a knowledge-sharing community and social content site on the other.” Diigo is an acronym for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff.”

Why am I interested in Diigo?
Diigo interests me because I am one who browses and reads a lot on the web. In the past, I have had difficulty organizing websites that are important to me. In an effort to keep a record of important internet files, I used to resort to lots of printing and filing. I’ve also had long lists of bookmarks stored in my browser windows which are tricky and cumbersome to organize.

What is Diigo used for?
Diigo resolves many of these organizational challenges. With Diigo, I can tag websites, annotate them with my own comments, highlight important sections on the web, and retrieve this information from any computer with internet access. And, others can see this information and add their own comments.

How do you use Diigo?
There are lots of excellent tutorials and “how to” demos available on the web. Visit this Jennifer Dorman site for a guide to various Diigo resources.

Has Diigo been used in educational applications? How? Is it effective?
Diigo is being used in educational applications. In fact, Diigo has a special account option for educators (K-12 and college/university). The educator account provides educators with additional account features, like setting up class accounts and groups with added privacy settings.

Educators are discovering the advantages afforded by the use of Diigo in learning situations. As Michael Wesch of Kansas State University points out, “Diigo turns reading and research into a social activity. Conversations emerge right on the page and spill over into the classroom. Students love it. They not only engage with the material, they engage with each other.” (Dorman, 2009)

To read more about how educators are using Diigo in their classrooms, read the Diigo Education Forum in Classroom 2.0.

What learning processes are involved — specifically?
My top five learning processes list includes visual engagement; social interaction; experience, practice and support; and reflection. Diigo directly involves all four of these learning processes (the fifth one on my list is making mistakes – I could argue that Diigo might be used to foster opportunities for students to capitalize on their mistakes through collaboration and social research projects).

Visual engagement – The highlighting and sticky note feature allow users to visually note important areas of text. Text coding – a reading comprehension strategy – could effectively be used with Diigo.

Social interaction – Diigo is designed to foster social interaction in an online environment. See Michael Wesch’s quote above.

Experience, practice, and support – Through Diigo’s group format, users have the ability to practice asking questions of others, and putting us in the company of others who have similar interests and mindsets.

Reflection – Diigo provides a format that allows for and encourages individual reflection. As I reflect on articles and website, I can add sticky notes, highlights, and comments to them, which will be available to me whenever I return to that article to think some more.

References
Dorman, J. (2009). Grazing for Digital Natives Wiki. Retrieved April 5, 2009, from http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/diigo