Wherever You Go, Diigo!
The internet is loaded with digital tools and resources. So many, in fact, it can be overwhelming to sort through them all! Most people collect these resources and tools in tabs, others in bookmarks, and yet others find more complex ways to story their digital journey. But once your list of resources hits ten or more, these ways of organization become unmanageable. Even more frustrating, sometimes these links become inactive or lost, and then all you have is a dead URL taking up space in your preferred method of organization. Thankfully, there is a tool to make collecting things on the net manageable and easy to navigate - Diigo. Until a short while ago, I had no idea what it was. After doing some "digging," I discovered that Diigo is a multi-tool for knowledge management. In other words, all those bookmarks, tabs, Google Docs filled with links, and other similar tools can now live in a single space called Diigo.
This might not be the feature that entices you at first glance, because of the power of other online spaces to do a similar thing. However, looking beyond first glances, Diigo offers more ways to engage with those bookmarks and link archives than other digital software on the market. For instance, it has the ability to annotate on websites with tools like highlights and stickies; if a website ever becomes inactive, Diigo saves all your annotations and a visual copy of the links you stored; you can code, categorize, and title all of your saved links and sort them by tagging for easy recall later; and you can share as much or as little of your annotations as you would like with designated networks. In my opinion, these features make Diigo an excellent resource for anyone in the 21st century. It is able to be differentiated to any user's experience.
In term of professional value, this site would be incredibly useful as a way to get my students involved with collaborative research in the classroom. Student can share links with one another, and annotate them with each other. Students no longer have to take notes in isolation; they can annotate together to better understand the material. Notes also don't have to be boring or confusing anymore, because students can take notes directly on the websites from which they originally wanted to take notes. Students will also never lose their notes as they are kept all in one place on their Diigo dashboard. This same idea would also be incredibly helpful to teachers, too. All of those tech trainings where we learn a new piece of technology, take notes in Docs, and then forget about it now become more useful with a tool like this.
For more information on how to get started with Diigo, check out the video below: