Diigo
Diigo is a tool that can be used for a process called social bookmarking. According to networksolutions.com
- "Social bookmarking is a way for people to store, organize, search, and manage 'bookmarks' of web pages. Users save links to web pages that they like or want to share, using a social bookmarking site to store these links."
- If you're like me, you often find really great resources or websites and you don't want to forget them. This results in lots of bookmarked websites and leaves you with no idea what you bookmarked them for. Diigo combats this issue. Diigo is an interface in which you can store these links so they are all on in one location. When you create an entry you can enter tags (much like the hash-tags on Twitter) that can be used to search for particular items later on.
For example, lets say you are doing a unit on the Civil War. You have bookmarked a Youtube video about slavery, a primary source document, a website about Abraham Lincoln, and some images of the Union uniforms. You now have a minimum of four bookmarked websites for this information. Instead of creating endless, unorganized lists of bookmarks, you could make each one of these sources an entry on Diigo with the tag #civilwar. When it comes time to use these sources all you have to do is search this tag to find all the sources you need to teach the lesson. Isn't that much simpler?
Diigo is much more a tool for teachers than for students, but students could use it in order to keep sources organized for projects or papers. The social aspect comes in later. You can follow other people on Diigo and share your sources with them and vice versa. You now have an organized list of resources complied by many people all in one place.