12 Reasons Teachers

should use Diigo

Presented by Kay Cantwell

Education Officer ResourceLink: Digital Learning

April 5 2011

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 in this booklet, 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 http://help.diigo.com/how-to-guide/bookmarking for a short video

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 a lists feature that allows you to share carefully

selected bookmarked websites with your students.

Adding bookmarks to lists is easy. When you save the bookmark, you are

able to allocate it to any list you have already created, or create a new list as

you go.

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.

5. Diigo allows you to gain access to the ‘collective intelligence’ of

the internet.

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.

Stay up to date with the most

regular postings in areas you

are interested in by subscribing

to a list using RSS.

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!

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

To find out more, and access tutorials the following resources may be useful:

Atomic Learning (http://www.atomiclearning.com ) has many tutorials for

Diigo version 4. While version 5 is now available, almost all of these tutorials

are still relevant.

Sign in to Atomic Learning using your Brisbane Catholic Education email as

your username, and the word ‘atomic’ as password.

Additional resources:

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