Unit 1, Activity 2

Organizing Web Content: Symbaloo & Diigo - Unit 1, Activity 2

Getting Started with Diigo

Diigo is a great tool for organizing online content: websites, articles, web-based tools. The beauty of Diigo is the speed in which you can capture content. Because it is built into the browser, you can easily bookmark content you MIGHT use later--in other words, you DO NOT need to spend time deciding whether you want to "keep" it long-term or not. If you save a bookmark you don't use later, there is nothing lost. Diigo organizes content newest to oldest, so as you bookmark new content the older less relevant content scrolls toward the bottom.

For the purposes of this class, bookmark everything you come across the web. Too often educators make the mistake of either making a decision too quickly not to bookmark or spend too much time trying to decide whether it is worth it. We are aiming for speed--being able to add content quickly without worrying about the utility of the website at the moment. You will be learning how to organize large numbers of bookmarks, so the more the better (if you only have a couple dozen sites it won't be that useful for the class).

Saving and Tagging Sites

Say you come across an article like this

4 Concerns — and Solutions — About Online Testing

Once the article is open in your browser, click on the Diigo tool.

Internet Explorer Example:

Google Chrome Example:

Depending on which Diigo tool you use, click on Bookmark or Save (and remember to save the links as "Public" not "Private").

Note the area called tags. This is your organizer for sites you save. Think of it as terms you would put on a file folder, but the beauty is that you can have more than one term. Brainstorm as many terms as you can for your tags.

One decision you have to make for tags concerns two-word phrases. Each word you type in is a separate tag, so you have to decide if you type them as separate words or combined. In the example above, online testing I decided to use two separate words as I would want this article to be labeled as both online and testing. On the other hand, I chose to combine smarterbalanced as I didn't anticipate needing the terms smarter and balanced as two separate tags. Note with common core I used quote marks to preserve it as a phrase. When you have two-word phrases, you will need to decide how you will put those tags into the bookmark.

Note also the checkbox for Private. This is a social bookmarking service, so your sites can be viewed by other users. If you have a site you don't want others to know you are bookmarking, then click Private. For this class, make sure all your sites are NOT marked as Private--you will be sharing these sites with others, including your instructor, later.

Your Task:

Bookmark these sites in Diigo:

Browse one or two articles from eSchoolNews and bookmark those articles in Diigo.

With each website or resource you bookmark, add as many tags as you find useful, but also add the tag tieclass for all the sites you bookmark for this class -- later we will pull up those resources by searching the tieclass tag.

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