Social Bookmarking with Diigo in the Classroom Kristen Henning Spring Grove Area School District

Introduction The Internet contains over 240 million websites. Some are good, some are not good, and some are just less than stellar. It is a tedious task keeping track of all of your favorite websites. In the teaching profession, we search the Internet regularly for resources and ideas. When we see something we like and would like to use later, we usually save it to our favorites. If we want to share our finds with a colleague, we usually them and they then add it to their favorites. The problem with favorites is they are very hard to manage or organize, and they are only accessible on the local computer. Forget working at home! Diigo is a Social Bookmarking site. Social Bookmarking allows users to save websites and access them anywhere there is an internet connection. Diigo specifically also allows users to share bookmarks within groups...no more s!

Task Throughout this webquest, you will become familiar with Diigo and its features. You will also become users of this social bookmarking tool and find out how it can be applied to your professional work and your classroom. As a culminating activity, you will plan a research project for your students that will enable them to access their resources quickly and easily as part of using Diigo in your classroom.

Process #1 What is Diigo? – Watch a brief introduction to DiigoDiigo – Visit – In the top right corner of the page, click “Join Diigo” You may want to use a home address that you can access remotely, any will get stuck in GWAVA. – Verify your account through – Download the Diigo toolbar (this process will need to be repeated on each of the computers you use i.e. home, school, etc.) In the top right corner of the page, click “Tools” Choose “Install Diigo Toolbar” – Choose Run – Agree to the statement – Choose “Yes” to close all Internet Explorer Windows – Log back into Diigo – You are ready to go!

Process #2 Creating Groups – Check out Share and CollaborateShareCollaborate – Decide who you would like to share resources with. Building grade levels, District grade levels, Just your friends, etc. – Have one person in your group click on “My Groups” in the big blue heading bar at the top of the page to create a new group – Share the name of the group so everyone can search for it – You will now be able to see and search each others bookmarks! – You can also search for other professional groups from which you could gather resources.

Process #3 Let’s get to work! – Start bookmarking and tagging your favorite resources! Wait, what is tagging? Find out here!Find out here! – Remember this is a professional site! Only bookmark items related to teaching! – If you would like to upload your favorites from your browser, click “Tools” at the top of the page and choose to “Import Bookmarks” – directions will appear at the bottom – Don’t forget to share your bookmarks with members of your groups if it would relate to them as well.

Process #4 Sharing with students – There are two ways that you could share your bookmarks with your students You could make one of your tags “Students” and when you bookmark something that could be relevant to them, just be sure to add it. Also, you could make lists. These lists could be project/unit specific, or very general. – Find some bookmarks now that would be relevant to your students and their work. They will be able to access these all in one place now and not be surfing the Internet totally free.

Process #5 Use with your students – Create a mini project or assessment that would require students to do research on the Internet – Find appropriate resources, tag them so students would be able to find them or create a list – Create a directions sheet for how students will access your Diigo page ( You may want to put a shortcut to it in your common folder (especially the younger grades) – Summarize the project/task in a document your students will be able to understand and use right away

Evaluation