Social bookmarking
I began taking a couple of instructional design classes several weeks ago (it's a blur, but I think it's been three weeks). This has kept me away from my blogging, but it has opened up new areas on the internet that I really hadn't taken the time to explore yet. One of these places has been social bookmarking.
The social bookmarking tool that the class has been using is Diigo at diigo.com. It has all the levels of use: free, which allows you 5 bookmarks a month; and a premium account ($40/yr or $5/mo) that is unlimited, allows you to upload screenshots, etc.; a basic paid account that allows you ad free content and 10 uploads per month ($20/yr) and an educator's free account that has the ability of setting up student accounts.
I decided to fall right into the premium account because I wanted to experience the entire site. After a frustrating first week on diigo, in which I questioned repeatedly and loudly my intelligence at acting so rashly, I am now beginning to see the beauty of this and other social bookmarking products.
First of all, my issues in the first week had little to do with the software itself and more to do with the assignment we had in class. We were to sign up for an account, easy enough, joing a specific group for this class, again, easy, and then post a link and add it to this group, the fun began here. Somewhere in the group settings, it was allowing us to join, allowing us to post, but not allowing our posts to be seen by anyone else. Had I not had a fellow student sitting in my office with me, this would have gone unnoticed, but he and I quickly realized we weren't seeing each other's content. My blood pressure rose quickly through the week as we attempted to find the answer to this but the Help section was no help. Then, after several pleading emails to the owner of the group and my instructor it began working on the last day of the assignment and although no one is saying, I assume it was a setting in the group. Sigh!
My own attempts at setting up groups has not met with this and with the convenience of an extension in all the major browsers and a reader on my iPhone, I am beginning to see this has a major convenience for accessing my course readings. I can link to the readings, make them private if I so choose, download them to my iPhone to read later and tag them in order to find them quickly when I need them. What more can a serial article reader ask for? I may have found my heaven.
Next entry is delicious.com. I have signed up for it and plan to use it enough to give you the head's up on it too. There is an FAQ on diigo that explains some of the difference and you can find it at http://www.diigo.com/transition-from-delicious-to-diigo-faq. Of course, this link is on diigo and could be considered biased towards diigo, but it seems to cover just the facts. Read it and think about the organization plan you are more comfortable with, because that appears to be the major difference.
