As part of this class on Integrating Technology and Literacy I'm taking we are required to used the bookmarking tool Diigo. As with all new things, I was a bit skeptical at first. To me a bookmark is a thin rectangular piece of cardboard one inserts between two pages of a book to mark where they left off reading. I very recently began experimenting with this new tool and have found it to be a valuable way to organize class resources. I'll admit that I have some "go to" resources that I use each year when it's time to discuss certain topics such as the electoral college or political parties and I'll also publicly admit that each year I spend way too much time relocating them online. Now I have begun collecting them in my Diigo Library. This tool allows me to classify each by topic heading and easily retrieve them when the time comes.
As long as you're good about using tags, creating summaries in the annotation box, and creating lists, you will be happy to have saved the links to your favorite sites. Diigo is a highly powerful tool. You can even share with students a list or a search of bookmarks using the generated URL. For instance, let's say you want to direct students to a bunch of sites you bookmarked for a unit on "Civil Rights Movement." Just access a list you created or search in your library for all bookmarks you tagged "Civil Rights Movement." You need then just to give the students the URL for the search or the URL for the Civil Right Movement list. There's a lot more to Diigo. For instance, you can join a group of social studies teachers to see what bookmarks they have in their libraries and search within their libraries. Keep exploring. It takes time to familiarize yourself with the many features Diigo offers.
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