Diigo Reflection
I actually enjoyed using Diigo so much more than I did last year. It seems as if they made the site more intuitive and user friendly. I must admit that being a guy, I'm never much for the instruction manual so I'm sure I might have figured some of the features out a little quicker had I read them! That being said, I was able to bookmark sites, annotate them, and tag them fairly easily. The only thing I did notice is that when I went back into my previously annotated bookmarked sites, I was not able to see the annotations. However, (again, had I read the instructions) I soon discovered that all of my previous annotations became visible once I clicked on the blue Diigo square (I don't know what it's real name is) on the browser's tool bar. Once I did this, all of my annotations became visible. The only other thing I kept forgetting to do was to tag the bookmarks as I loaded them, but this was easy enough to remedy by clicking on the edit button for each of the items in my library. This is a great feature because it allows me to easily locate the articles I want to work with by simply typing the tag in the search bar. The only thing I'm still wondering about is I seem to remember Don saying that you could organize your bookmarks in files, similar to google drive - haven't figured that one out yet! All in all though, I'm very impressed with this site's functionality and am looking forward to trying it out with my students.
Hi Josh, I was able to organize them into files using the "My Outliners." Good to know our old annotations should be visible still, I hadn't figured that part out yet. How are you using the tagging feature of Diigo?
ReplyDeleteI am looking into Diigo again as I write this. It is amusing to me that when we were asked a year ago to use this, it was a horrible experience. Its nice to see that they have made major improvements to the functionality of the site. I think it would be very beneficial for anyone who teaches this program again, to schedule time to really show the students how to use it. I dont feel like we had adequate exposure to it. The workshop method is good for most things but I think with this, a lesson would be much more beneficial.
ReplyDeleteI came onto the comment section to ask Josh to let me know when he figures out how to organize into files and then saw Rachel's comment. I'm starting to appreciate the usefulness of blogging. Now my question for Rachel is, do you have to set up files first or can you do this and organize bookmarks that are already in your library?
ReplyDeleteAs far as tagging goes, when you save a bookmark, options pop open in a box. The tagging section lets you add tags or words that you can later search to find sites with specific information. I would tag things by subject like Earth science or astronomy, plus tags like video or interactive activity. It makes things much easier to find although files might work in a similar way?
They definitely ran into the wall again when I started with Diigo. It felt too burdensome to me. I spent about a half hour on it and it just seemed like too much of an effort for something as simple as web curation. My goal was to spend more time on finding and thinking about cool web 2.0 tools and useful websites. Diigo threatened to become the purpose and end of my web curation. I ended up looking through about ten different tools (by reading tons of "10 best" lists) until I found one that was purely point and click and completely lacked those nefarious directions that guys tend to ignore. My search ended at Edshelf. It was a simple, three-step process to create a "shelf". Add a fourth if a site you like isn't already in their database. Because it is so simple (and can be easily embedded into a website) I found it lovely.
ReplyDeleteI still don't like it!
ReplyDeleteI still don't like it!
ReplyDelete