W5: Adventures in Social Bookmarking - Diigo

Adventures in Social Bookmarking - Diigo 

This week we were challenged to explore Diigo, a social bookmarking tool on the Google Play Store. I have never heard of Diigo or social bookmarking, so my first adventure is researching, learning, and tinkering with social bookmarking online. Although I know what bookmarks are in using the internet web browsers with searching and bookmarking sites to be used for reference later, this is my first encounter with "social bookmarking." So, I began with a Google search to learn more about social bookmarking. I knew social bookmarking saves specific or favorite webpage(s) to a social bookmarking software platform, like Pocket, Pinterest, Digg, Mix, and Slashdot. Social bookmarking media, apps, and websites allow users to revisit the saved bookmarks and add, annotate, collect, organize, and designate sharing permissions individually or in groups, content curation, and others. As I was researching social bookmarking, Pinterest kept coming up in my search, which was interesting because I am very familiar with Pinterest. I use it often too, but I had never heard of Pinterest being referred to as a "social bookmark" site. This was interesting to me. 

Next, I redirected my search to the specific social bookmarking platform, Diigo. I looked at various social bookmarking topics in my web navigation, including those on Diigo. First, Diigo is a "Digest of Internet Information, Groups, and Other stuff." This helped connect me, as I used to use "brick and mortar" (hardcover) versions of encyclopedias that our family purchased from door-to-door salesmen back in the day. Subsequently, we received one volume, "brick and mortar," of these encyclopedias, and we couldn't wait to receive and begin reading and learning from them. Getting past my humorous reflection of our family's access to such once thought numerous. Amount of information we learned from them...; I learned that in addition to all the above information of social bookmarking, Diigo also affords users the ability to highlight specific details, create and use sticky notes, tagging features, streamline communication with the outliner, create/managing personal users libraries, as well as archiving webpages (with the paid version) from their social bookmarking platform. Depending on the web browser you are working in, users can install the Diigo app extension using Google Chrome, for example. 

I consider myself to be tech-savvy, but when I created my Diigo account and began to stroll through this social bookmarking site, either it wasn't very intuitive to learn to use, or I am slipping with my technology knowledge and skills, which is possible and essential for me to continue my lifelong technology journey to continue to learn, grow, socialize, and engage... with others in this technology resolution of a world we are in today. 

Reflection

I am amazed every day by the things, information, and stuff that I am unaware of in my personal and professional life. This is one reason that lifelong learning is essential to individuals and seeking out daily to learn new things, stuff, and information. Also, as educators, we must help make students aware of the world's ever-growing vast array of items and stuff, and lead to learning, even if we all focus on minimally learning one thing daily. Furthermore, with today's learners, knowing how much technology impacts technology in one's life is crucial. If an individual took an inventory of the number of software applications, mobile apps, other digital media, and web 2.0 tools used and necessary to successfully interact, engage, and navigate through today's world, the results would be astonishing. Thankfully, I know that to learn about and perfect my skills and knowledge of anything, I must use the resource daily and stretch and expand my "learning" muscles.