Peer Review

Diigo

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Reviewed:: Jul 18, 2010 by Teacher Education

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: Diigo (pronounced dee-go) is a collaborative research tool that allows users to personalize sites by highlighting content and adding sticky notes on web pages of personal/professional interest and then sharing the personalized content with others. The collaborative element allows users to connect with others sharing similar interests. The site also offers educator accounts that support accounts for an entire class.
Type of Material:: Social Bookmarking/Social Networking
Recommended Uses:: Diigo is a strong personal site for saving web-based information, highlighting and annotating specific information of relevance and importance, and sharing that information with others through online collaboration. It can be used effectively for group research projects at many academic levels. This program could be used in class, as homework, for collaborative projects. It would be excellent for students to use to compare and contrast information from various resources.
Technical Requirements:: Site states you must use Firefox, IE, or Flock browsers. Reviewer was able to use Safari. Can be used with IPad, IPhone and Android.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: Students will annotate, archive and organize information located on the web.
Target Student Population:: Teachers, teacher educators, pre-service teachers, and students from upper elementary through college can use this site to good advantage.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: Ability to connect to the Internet, ability to read and understand web-based content, and ability to activate hyperlinks.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: +Diigo, clearly states what it can do: bookmark, highlight, collaborate, archive, and organize. +This program can be used in a number of different ways including creating subject lists with annotations that can be shared.
Concerns:: Teachers planning to use Diigo for instruction on effective research will need to provide essential instruction on evaluation of materials and other research techniques. This instruction combined with the tools available in Diigo will make an effective teaching/learning combination. Instructional videos can be slow to load. There are not instructions to print out, that can be used in place of the videos.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

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Strengths:: Diigo can be used effectively in a variety of ways. The ability to annotate through the use of digital sticky notes can provide evidence of user's thought processes in evaluating the information. The ease of social bookmarking will give the teacher easy access to that information at any time. Additionally, this site can be used by teachers to provide a standard body of information sources for class research projects. All skills can be learned in a short time. Diigo is free and educators can upgrade to a free premium account. Class accounts can be set up and students can then share resources.
Concerns:: There are no learning objectives built into Diigo; it is designed as a personal research tool that can be used independently or shared with others. Teachers who wish to use it as a tool for effective research strategies will need to set their own learning objectives and provide materials and instruction to support them.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

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Strengths:: Diigo is very easy to use. There are clear and easy-to-follow tutorials for all elements of Diigo. Setup is quick and easy, and toolbar makes most actions just a click away. Educators are eligible for a premium account that allows them to set up student accounts quickly and easily. Privacy settings of student accounts are pre-set so that only teachers and classmates can communicate with them, and ads presented to student account users are limited to education-related sponsors.

Other Issues and Comments:: This is an excellent tool for collecting, storing and retrieving information on any subject in a quick, organized, effective way. The annotations are excellent for reminding oneself why the article was important.
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