With so many people finding resources and wishing to share with the group, it was quickly necessary to find a tool that would help us keep track of what people found and what contributors felt a given resource was good for.
We used a free online resource called Diigo. It is a social bookmarking site that allows people to share links through a system of tags. Think of a tag as a category or label you wish to put on a resource. A site may have many tags such as "Science, Kids, Videos, Documentary..." for some site from PBS Kids that documents the life of some animal. For our purposes, we needed to ensure that everyone was using the same tags. Even an extra space in a tag can make it very hard to catch duplication in the list of resources. For example, if we had a tag of "Books" and someone tagged a resource with "Book" we would have problems ensuring that all of the resources were included in our evaluation process.
With this in mind, I created a little overview document that highlighted exactly what tags were were to use and I included some tutorial, start up, information to help people get familiar with Diigo.
For this week, your task is to get a free Diigo account, check out tutorials in the link above if you need some help, and request to join the "Adult Education Resources" group in Diigo. As you request, I hope to be able to get you in promptly. If you are not able to get in within half a day, please email me at ohgeer@gmail.com and let me know who you are and what your Diigo nickname was so I can track down what might have gone wrong. If anyone would like help with getting into Diigo, I would be willing to host a live streaming session later this week where people could ask questions and see demonstrations if that would help. Of course, coordinating times and days can be difficult. Please post any thoughts if you want to try a digital connection with the group in this next week.
Of course, as you are reviewing Diigo and how awesome a tool it is, feel free to experiment with your own personal Diigo list of resources. Next week (4/16 on) we will be soliciting new resources being added (if any) to the group Diigo list, but for this week, let's just get accounts, learn the tool a bit and get invitations to the Adult Education Resources group squared away.
Please post any question, thoughts, or reactions to the Diigo tool. There is tons of power in this resource and many options to explore if one wishes. For most of us, an understanding of how to tag and how to share a resource with a group should be sufficient.
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Just in case some of you wanted an introduction to Diigo, I offer this little (3 min) video that goes over some of the features.
After reviewing that, and hopefully getting your account set up, please visit our group and request an invitation so you can see all the wonderful resources that were already collected from last year's group. So many goodies for you to check out for your classroom.
Please share what you find helpful with the tool or with the resources already tagged in our group. If you need help getting started, please email me or drop a comment in this thread.
Just fyi, I wasn't able to find our group using the diigo search tool. I was only able to see the group when I clicked through the link provided above in the 4th paragraph. I think it doesn't show up in a general search because it's a private group, but you should be able to find it by clicking directly on the link. Hope this helps!
Thank you Jana for reminding me that the group was set to private. As Jana said, the only way to find and request entry into our exclusive little diigo club is through the link provided in the posts above :)
Thank you for sharing this tip! If anyone else discovers little tricks or tips, please share. I can share a quick one: Diigo is so much more effective if you set up the Diigo shortcuts on your tool bar of your browser. There are two flavors of this shortcut, the Diigolet ( a simplified, quick way to do things) or the Diigo Toolbar (a browser extension with many more options available). I personally like the Diigo Toolbar. Let us know which you prefer and why.