Since you are all starting to collect background materials on your research topic, I am going to discuss a cool application called Diigo that allows you to save, organize, highlight and annotate website resources. The old-fashioned way of working with website information is to put a bookmark for the webpage into a folder in your browser's "Favorites", print a copy of the page, highlight the important passages and write comments in the margins of the pages. If you are like me when you get a bunch of sites, you can't remember what the bookmark is called, and, when there are several topics covered on the webpage, into which of the possible folders you stashed it. When you are done with your research, several trees will have donated their lives to your project; you will need physical therapy from lugging your backpack full of papers around and then need to make a major deposit in your local landfill or recycling center! Enter Diigo (pronounced Deego), the paperless way to highlight, annotate, organize your materials and share them with your research partner and others in our class. Diigo bookmarks are saved online rather than to a file on your browser so they are available anywhere on any computer connected to the internet.

The web is a dynamic resource. Have you ever bookmarked a great site only to have it disappear? Diigo can help preserve items that you have found. The service archives any links that you save so they are accessible to you even if the site page is no longer available online. In addition these pages are searchable so it is easier for you to find the information you need.

Introduction to Diigo (no spoken audio):

Diigo is also good for collaboration so you can share websites that you find with other members of our class. So while doing research, if you come across material that you think will help someone with his/her topic, you can put the bookmark in Diigo. This is why it is called a social bookmarking service.

Diigo for Collaboration:

You should generate a Diigo account from the email invitation that I have sent to you. Our group is a private group only available to members of the Ch 361 class. The first thing you need to do is to add a tool to your web browser that will allow you to use Diigo while doing web research. You can download and install the Diigo toolbar into your browser by clicking the "Install Diigo Toolbar" button and following the instructions. Unfortunately, this only works for computers on which you have administrative privileges for adding software. If you are on a computer that does not allow you to install anything (such as the ones in WOU labs), there is a tool that you add to your browser that does not require permanent installation called Diigolet. This drag and drop bookmarklet does not have all the bells and whistles of the full toolbar but allows you to highlight, annotate and bookmark.

Adding the Diigolet:

You can access the Diigolet from the Diigo website by clicking on this link, If you are using Internet Explorer, all you have to do is right click the Diigolet button and save it to your favorites. That will put a shortcut to the application on your Favorites list. If you do that on a WOU computer, it will always be available to use anytime you need it. All you will need to do is to open your Favorites, drag and drop the shortcut onto the browser tool bar. There are Diigolet apps available for whatever flavor of web browser you choose to use (click on the link "Diigolet for other browsers..." on the Diigolet page to show the instructions for other browsers including Firefox, Safari, Chrome, etc). Go ahead and add the Diigolet to your browser now and then come back to this page.

You are now ready to try out some of the features of Diigo. You will use this web page for learning to use Diigo's basic features. Let's say that you want to highlight the information for obtaining the Diigolet for future reference so it is easy to spot next time you open this page. All you need to do is select the part of the text you would like to highlight by holding down the left mouse button and dragging the mouse over the passage. Choose "Highlight". Voila, the section is now highlighted in yellow! That is all there is to highlighting.

A text box will come up that allows you to add a description of the page, include tags, and either save the bookmark to your list only or to share it with your project partner or the class group.

Tags are particularly useful because they are your organizers. Tags are keywords created to serve as identifiers for searching or filtering. After you have accumulated a lot of bookmarks, you can search the list by tag. The search will return a list of all the sites saved with that particular tag term. Instead of having to put a site in a single topic folder, you can save it with a number of tags.

When you share bookmarks, your highlights and annotations will be visible to those with whom you have shared it. This link will take you to a page where you can access help with using the Diigo functions described above and other features available.