Beyond Social Bookmaring

The biggest concern I've heard about SBAC testing is students aren't taught to annotate online.  Students have numerous strategies for highlighting and marking a printed text.  The jump to online only reading is fearsome.  Even more scary, Common Core standards want students to talk with each other and collaborate.  Apologies to anyone who is a fan of prison rows.

Enter Diigo [crowd goes wild].  Okay, crowd didn't go wild at first.  Diigo initially launched as a social bookmarking site...yadda yadda.  BUT Diigo is evolving:

What can it do?

• Collect web pages
• Articles are stored offline. If the page disappears, you still have the information.
• Organize articles by tagging
• Highlight important parts of articles
• Annotate articles with sticky notes

How can I use it?

• Organize my research
• Collaborate with a group
• receive email notifications of annotations
• Develop PLNs (Professional Learning Network)
• See what your friends are bookmarking
• Threaded discussion 
• Research
• Share
• Learn!

Classroom considerations

• Setting can be public, private, or group
• Teachers can share webpages for the class to discuss
• Teachers can share with each other 
• Find that article you wanted to share easily
• No mores scrolling through emails to fine that one link
• Hit more standards

Diigo continues to find ways to improve.  Extra plug-ins are available to do even more cool things with.  Since you could be anywhere, there is also an iphone and android app.

Diigo makes reading and learning social, safe, and accessible!!