Since all the drama last month revolving around the (non) closure of delicious I decided to take a second (or third) look at diigo as the place to manage not just my bookmarks but my ability to easily share online resources. I’ve always thought of delicious as so much more than an anytime/anyplace bookmark tool … it is a social network in every single way. I’ve been an active user since the early days and have used it in my teaching for quite some time and have always seen it as part of a larger teaching and learning toolset. Through the years I’ve used it faithfully, but the way Yahoo appears to be treating the service I thought I better see what else is out there to support my needs and interests going forward.
I will say that delicious still feels better to me, but that is more than likely because of familiarity. After importing all my delicious links into diigo and banging around a bit I am very impressed. I love the ability to highlight parts of pages I am reading and easily add comments from within the browser … I also like that when I view my library I not only see my bookmarks, but also the highlighted content I was initially impressed with. I am enjoying the groups and really like that it is helping me keep my eyes on what some important people in my professional life are paying attention to.
Its not so much that I am late to the diigo party, its just that I may have stayed over at del.icio.us’ place a little too long.
The other day I filled out a request to get an educator account at diigo and was rewarded with that a day later. I haven’t yet fully explored what it all means, but at first glance it looks like I can create a very simple social network for storing, managing, and sharing content with groups of students quickly and easily by importing a class list. I would recommend investigating the affordances of the diigo educator account and sharing some thoughts.
I’m still playing with this tool for teaching and learning … I’d like to push beyond the notion of a simple shared space for collecting resources. I am sure that when my friend and colleague, Scott McDonald and I tee up our Disruptive Technology in Teaching and Learning course we’ll be taking advantage of what a tool like this has to offer in some new and interesting ways. I am beginning to wonder how we as an Institution could find a way to partner with the folks at diigo … what would that relationship look like and how could we make it play out in a positive sense in the mid to long term? I’d love to hear about how people are using diigo in their teaching as well in managing their own professional lives.
