Diigo Social Bookmarking Tool

Diigo is a web-based alternative to the traditional way of saving bookmarks on your computer.  Diigo is free and you can easily import all of your existing bookmarks to get started.  Here are the top 5 reasons I prefer using social bookmarking in Diigo…and these are just the basic features.

1.  Anytime, anywhere, any computer, any platform access:

I can access my bookmarks from any computer because Diigo is web-based. I frequently present workshops using computers that are not mine on both Windows and Mac platforms, but I still have access to all of my bookmarks. If I'm in someone’s office and want to share a website, I can log into my Diigo account on their computer and show the website instead of having to go back to my office to email the url.  And when I change computers, I don’t have to worry about transferring them.  I can also export my Diigo bookmarks to Favourites or to a backup file or elect to bookmark to both Diigo and Delicious simultaneously.

2.  Fully described bookmarks:

I can describe the bookmarks fully so I can remember what I liked (or didn’t like) about them. This is especially handy if I'm reviewing similar sites and want to remember which ones I've tried and would (or would not) recommend.  I can easily preview the website to refresh my memory, share the website by email or to a “friend” on Diigo, delete the website, or edit my description or tags.  Other people on Diigo can also read and comment on my descriptions for my public (but not my private) bookmarks.

3. Tags instead of folders:

The bookmarks are given one or more tags rather than stored in folders. This is a huge advantage because tag clouds are a much easier way to find things and eliminate the need to pick just one folder for storage. Tag clouds are a much better indexing system when you have hundreds of bookmarks.  The largest words in the tag cloud contain the most items.

4.  Connecting with colleagues and experts:

Since Diigo is a social bookmarking site, I can see what experts in their fields have tagged. I hardly use Google anymore. Instead I head for Diigo and see what my colleagues and the experts are bookmarking. Why Google "udl" and sift through all the sites yourself when you can browse David Rose's “udl” bookmarks in Diigo?  I can also invite my colleagues as “friends” and see what they’re bookmarking.  People in the BC UDL Project are also contributing to a special collaborative group on Diigo.  This makes it possible for people working in 21 different school districts to share their favourite sites.

5.  Easy to recommend websites:

Instead of emailing me with questions about websites, people I know can just sign on to Diigo and look at my bookmarks.  I can also make specialty lists of bookmarks on certain topics and then share those (with anyone who has Internet) by clicking a button to create a WebSlides tour. The WebSlides tour url can then be posted as a link or emailed.  During the WebSlides tour, you can pause at any point and click on the live links to explore the websites. The tour also updates automatically when you add a new item to the specialty bookmark list it was created from. 

Click here to play the Multiple Means of Expression webslides tour. 

You are welcome to browse or join our Diigo groups:

BC UDL Diigo Group

WAFMS Diigo Group  (Year 2 Abbotsford Team)

How would you rate your bookmarking skills?  Andrew Church included this downloadable rubric for evaluating the use of social bookmarking at his fabulous Bloom's Digital Taxonomy site.  By the way, he's got rubrics for blogs, wikis, and other Web 2.0 tools as well.