Web 2.0 Wednesday Glittery Tool Highlight

Happy Wednesday! HUMPPPPP DAYYY!

This week has been a slow start for me; returning from an awesome (but tiring) trip to Nashville, packing/moving in full swing (things are a total mess) plus work life picking up as Fall approaches, I am feeling the mid-Summer C burn! Anyone else feeling like a hot mess??

As life moves quickly, staying organized is my KEY to success.

I try to use any and all tips, tricks and tools to keep myself organized

Today I wanted to highlight a Web 2.0 curation tool that has really helped me in the past, diigo!

What's a curation tool?

A curation tool is a tool that helps people manage their bookmarks. In relation to social media, according to Dr. Vanessa Dennen "social media curation is [the] organized and purposeful collecting and sharing of annotated, online content"

So... is Pinterest a curation tool?

Yup! Pinterest is a curation tool! In my opinion, it is the most fun and easy-to-use curation tool for new Web 2.0 users. Check out the blog post I wrote highlighting Pinterest! If you are new to the world of Pinterest my post provides some great boards to follow and what I'm loving using Pinterest for right now.

Don't forget to follow the Always Add Glitter Pinterest account!

What about this new tool, diigo?

"Diigo (diigo.com) is a social bookmarking tool that supports multiple types of note-taking interactions"(Im, T. & Dennen, V. P. (2013). Building a collaborative knowledge base in Diigo: How links, tags, and comments support learning.)

Diigo allows users to bookmark websites and highlight, annotate, and share thoughts on bookmarked websites through the platform.

Highlighting and annotating directly on web pages allows users to re-read information quicker and note the most important points of the article by being visually drawn to highlights on the page.

"The ability to not only story but also retrieve tagged items and notes is critical for the successful adoption of a social bookmarking tool" (Im, T. & Dennen, V. P. (2013). Building a collaborative knowledge base in Diigo: How links, tags, and comments support learning.)

How do I get started with diigo?

Diigo is a relatively simple tool to begin using, and the platform has a robust Help Center with articles and videos providing support on a variety of topics.

I found it was best to use diigo in conjunction with Google Chrome, so I use the Google Chrome plugin option diigo provides for users. Also, if you aren't using Google Chrome as your main browser. I highly suggest you switch!

According to diigo, "By adding the Diigo extension, users can access the special features available for online curation such as highlighter, sticky notes and pdf annotation. It’s easy to store and organize your knowledge and bookmarks using the extensions. Here you can find out how to install and use these features depending on what extension you wish to download."

Can I get an example?

Everything I share with you guys I always like to play around with myself so I can answer questions and provide suggestions on best-practices with using the platform. Thus, I wanted to share the two jigsaw articles I read this week while using Diigo to save and annotate the PDF files!

The first article I read and annotated using diigo, Building a collaborative knowledge base in Diigo: How links, tags, and comments support learning by Tami Im and Vanessa Dennen can be found here.

On that article you'll notice some of the quotes included in this blog post! Diigo helped me review the article and highlight the specific pieces of information I wanted to either quote or reflect upon when writing this post.

The second article I read and annotated using diigo, Information sharing on social media sites by Babajide Osatuyi, can be found here.

With this article, I decided to use different highlight colors to note which quotes I wanted to include in a post, which quotes I reflected upon, and which quotes surprised me (and will hopefully surprise you!)

How to add glitter to using diigo?

Use diigo in conjunction with Google Chrome to have access to all the plug-in features this social media curation tool provides
Create a diigo group for your colleagues or friends who you frequently share links with! "Diigo Groups provides a ground-breaking collaborative research and learning tool that allows any group of people to pool their findings through group bookmarks, highlights, sticky notes, and forum"
Read this Help Center article on how to get started with diigo groups
Create an annotation plan to organize how you annotate articles. Will you use the yellow highlight for quotes, the red highlight for shocking facts, and the green highlight for statements you agree with? Since diigo provides customizeable highlight options, use that to your advantage and get even more focused with your annotations!