In my third period class a couple weeks back a student asked about her old bookmarks and whether the school would have a backup of them. I wondered why a junior at a one to one laptop school did not know about Delicious, and proceeded to show it to her and the class, including how to upload her current bookmarks. Then someone else in the class said, "That sounds a lot like Diigo." This made me very happy and I showed the class my Diigo account. The original student who had asked the question asked why anyone would use Delicious when there was Diigo? I did not know the answer. So that day I imported all my Delicious bookmarks into my Diigo account and set it up to post everything to delicious just in case. This also prompted me to investigate the free Diigo educators account, and the email exchange below with our district Technology Integration Specialist.
Me:
Dan:
I should add that I have at least one teacher doing the same thing with a Posterous account, which can also be linked to Delicious.
Me:
Recently when I switched to using Diigo I applied for an ad free educator account. The process was simple and I had created a couple of groups that had students posting in them so they approved me a couple of days later. You become then a member of their educators group, which I am finding to be a rich but not overwhelming source of outside perspective. It is not all the usual suspects posting links there, which makes it different. A little more practical. If you have not joined or if you delete the group emails take a look.
Dan:
I recommend the educator account to all the teachers I talk to about Diigo. It really works well for teachers who want to manage their students in groups. I get the emails from a variety of Diigo Groups and I find them very valuable - Diigo in Education Group, The Apple Group, Group I Love Teaching Math, Google in Education, Group Classroom 2.0. Sometimes I can't keep up with the links even though they come about once a day. But usually when I look at the links they are some great things. I have really bought into Diigo for the past year - hopefully it doesn't go the way of delicious. I recommend Diigo to teachers now as a tool for finding those nuggets online.
I should add that I have at least one teacher doing the same thing with a Posterous account, which can also be linked to Delicious.