Do you Diigo? Organizing websites for you and your students!

I'm not sure about you, but I am constantly pinning, bookmarking, saving documents to use later - then completely forget about them or I am too exhausted to go sift back through them to organize and find what I was looking for. Imagine how overwhelmed your students are when they are researching! My latest technology find will be my first step to finally get the ball rolling to become a little more organized for myself and my students.

Enter Diigo - a powerful social bookmarking tool that combines research tools and a knowledge-shared community. I love the fact that you can create groups and add specific bookmarks annotating exactly what you want your students to focus on. Here are 8 great reasons from Shakeuplearning.com as why this tool might be the magic wand for you:

1. Web-based bookmarks: Need I say more? Bookmarks can be made and accessed from any web-enabled device. No more losing your “favorites!” (Goodbye Internet Explorer!)
2. Tagging! Tags allow you to assign keywords to your bookmarks. Tagging is so much more practical than folders, when you are forced to choose one folder for your bookmark. With tags, you can assign as many tags or keywords as you like, making it easier for you and others to locate your bookmarks.
3. It’s Social! You can share your bookmarks with others, join and create groups and collaboratively share your bookmarks, notes and comments! You can even follow other educators to see what they are bookmarking.
4. Annotate the web! Did you know you can highlight, add sticky notes, and even take screenshots to add to bookmarks? You can also share a unique URL with your annotations with your students! Diigo is a great resource for student research!
5. Read Later is a favorite feature of mine. I often find a great resource that I want to come back to later. I just mark it as “read later,” and it is saved to my library.
6. The Diigo App: Yes, there’s an app for that! The Diigo Browser app for iOS is phenomenal. I can bookmark, annotate, share with my groups, AND it connects to my other social media accounts so I can pin it to Pinterest and tweet out the link.
7. Diigo Extension for Chrome: Yes, you know how I love Chrome! But the Diigo extension is my MVP. It keeps me connected to my library, and makes it so easy to bookmark, share, and annotate from my computer.
8. Connect Diigo to Twitter: Not only is Diigo social in its own right, but you can connect your Twitter account and have all of your Twitter favorites automatically added to your Diigo bookmark library!

Are you ready to try it? Need to learn a little more? Here are two great sites to get started!

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

https://sites.google.com/site/team8project9440/using-diigo-in-the-classroom-2

I have created a general account that my library students can use. It only took 24 hours for Diigo to give me educator access. I plan on organizing groups based on my elementary library classes. Definitely a work in progress....but I'm excited to give it a go!

Do you Diigo? Any tips? Pros/Cons? Would love to hear from you!

*Are you an elementary teacher or librarian that loves to collaborate and share ideas with others? Join our FB group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/1736031856636639/