Diigo: A Look into Social Bookmarking
What is Social Bookmarking?
Before diving into my experience with Diigo, I want to start by explaining what social bookmarking is—because, to be honest, I had a completely different idea of what it meant before I actually looked into it.
Social bookmarking is the process of saving, organizing, and sharing links on an online platform. The easiest way to think about it is like Pinterest, where you can create boards filled with categorized links that are embedded into images. Another example is LinkTree, a popular tool for content creators who want to share multiple links in a simple, organized way.
For educators, social bookmarking can be a powerful tool for curating resources, collaborating with colleagues, and making sure that important links are always accessible, no matter what device we’re using.
A Personal Reflection on Social Bookmarking
At first, I assumed social bookmarking had something to do with saving social media links for educational use. But after a little research (and even asking ChatGPT for clarification), I realized it was something entirely different—and much more useful than I expected.
The beauty of social bookmarking is that it allows you to organize your saved websites in a way that makes sense to you and then access them from any device. No more emailing links to myself or forgetting which site I found a great resource on! Everything is stored in one place, neatly categorized and easy to share.
This brings me to Diigo, a social bookmarking tool that I had the chance to explore.
My Experience with Diigo
I’ll be honest—my first attempt at using Diigo wasn’t the smoothest. I initially tried to sign up using my university account, and it just didn’t work. Frustrated, I decided to try again with my personal account, and suddenly everything worked just fine.
Once I finally got into the platform, I started to see the potential. Diigo isn’t just a bookmarking tool; it allows you to highlight text, make annotations, and even add notes to saved pages. I installed the Chrome extension, and that’s when I really started to appreciate what it could do.
With the extension, I could:
✅ Save and organize bookmarks in one place
✅ Highlight important sections of articles
✅ Add my own notes and annotations
✅ Share my highlighted and annotated work with others
I wasn’t able to join my class group due to a technical issue, but that didn’t stop me from playing around with the tool. The more I used it, the more I saw how useful it could be—especially for educators.
Why Should Educators Use Social Bookmarking?
As teachers, we are constantly sharing resources with each other—whether it’s lesson plans, research articles, or helpful websites. Social bookmarking makes this process so much easier by keeping everything in one place and allowing for seamless collaboration.
Instead of sending colleagues a long email full of links (that might get lost in an overflowing inbox), we can create a shared library of resources that everyone can access at any time.
And it’s not just for teachers—students can benefit too! Imagine students working on a research project, collecting sources, highlighting key points, and adding their own notes, all within one tool. Social bookmarking can help them stay organized and improve their research skills.
Final Thoughts
At first, I wasn’t sure if social bookmarking was something I would use regularly. But after exploring Diigo, I can definitely see its value for both teachers and students. It’s an excellent tool for organizing and sharing resources, and I plan to continue using it in my professional life.