Social Bookmarking
My Web 2.0 exploration continues this week with a dive into a Chrome Extension titled Diigo. The extension allows you to bookmark sites as you explore them and stores them in the Diigo site itself. This is nice as you don't have to login to your own Google account to access your bookmarks. As my boyfriend and I sometimes borrow each other's computers this would be a useful feature. It also lets you highlight and add sticky notes and saves them for you in the bookmarked site in your library (on the Diigo site). This may not seem that useful, but for e-reading and researching this could make it a lot easier if you have a big project and get interrupted or need to stop for a day. This also might be a useful tool for students who are reading online.
Another feature of Diigo was the "groups" feature where you could share websites or pages with a group of similar interest. Although I enjoyed reading the shared posts from my classmates, I don't know if this feature has any more advantages over other social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram and it may be easier to get people to join a group on sites that are more well known to the public. It may be a better tool to use in the classroom however, as it doesn't have the privacy and controversy concerns of apps such as Facebook or Twitter.
The downside to Diigo was the interface and overall visual look. Many classmates found it "dated looking" which makes me think that younger students may be turned off by it's look. However, I may get used to it and am not ready to give up on it yet.
Twitter could also be considered a Social Bookmarking site, giving the user the ability to like, and "retweet" sites. As with Instagram, the algorithmn of Twitter can sometimes cause you to miss bookmarks that people you follow share, as it often inserts tweets it thinks you will like and accounts you actually follow can get lost in the shuffle. It also lets you search by "hashtags" (topics) and follow groups. It sorts the findings by most recent or "top" (most liked or retweeted). This limitation can also cause you to miss relevant results which were tweeted prior but not liked or retweeted.
Another Social Bookmarking tool is Pinterest which I have used for years for myself, but never used with students. You can save "pins" of websites or images to a board and "followers" can see what you save on their "feed." I feel like students would like using this in class but it there doesn't seem like there are many safeguards with having students use sites like Pinterest or Twitter so Diigo may be the best bet.
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