For the past several months, in consultation with dozens of educators, we have been researching ways to make Diigo more accessible to the education community, and to make Diigo a more integral part of collaborative learning in the school environment.
Today, we are happy to announce the release of Diigo Educator Accounts, a suite of features that makes it incredibly easy for teachers to get their entire class of students or their peers started on collaborative research using Diigo’s powerful web annotation and social bookmarking technology.
Specifically, once approved for a Diigo Educator Account
A teacher can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation)
Students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and annotations, and group forums.
To protect the privacy of students, student accounts have special settings which only allow their teachers and classmates to contact them and access their personal profile information.
Ads presented to student account users are limited to education-related sponsors.
If you are an educator, you can go ahead and apply for a free Diigo Educator account now!
You can also check out FAQ and Getting Started tutorial for Diigo Educator Accounts.
Diigo Educator Accounts is only the first phase of our efforts to bring to education the powerful benefits of Diigo. Some early adopters of Diigo in education have these to say:
“Our diigo educators group has added so much to my professional learning as we can share bookmarks and use a standard set of tags for sharing. I am very excited to now use this technology with my classroom in a protected space with my students, I appreciate Diigo’s willingness to invest in technology that makes teaching easier and gives us a personalized way to mark up and share our internet resources.”
Vicki A. Davis
Teacher & IT director,Westwood Schools
Top ranked Edublogger
Co-creator & awardees of numerous global Collaborative Projects
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“Diigo turns reading and research into a social activity. Conversations emerge right on the page and spill over into the classroom. Students love it. They not only engage with the material, they engage with each other.”
Dr. Michael Wesch
Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Kansas State University
Creator of the hit youtube video “The machine is us(ing) us”
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“I see all kinds of great educational applications for Diigo. One of the obstacles to using the Web for classroom research is the limited amount of time available for online classroom activities. And, since we specialize in technology use in the middle school grades, the slow reading pace of many of the students can also become an issue. Using the text highlighting combined with the sticky note feature, the students can be quickly guided to the most important information on a site, with a discussion starter or question posted on the sticky note. This is a groundbreaking tool in terms of the efficient use of the Web in a classroom setting… I did the demo this morning to 40 Mississippi teachers in a workshop, and it went off without a hitch. The teachers loved it. Next month some time, we would like to do a full-blown training session for our Technology Facilitators… Thanks for such a great product!”
Melanie M. Jenning
C·R·E·A·T·E for Mississippi
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Bob Wolf, of The Boston Consulting Group, and a researcher on the use of internet in public education recently commented: “We believe that Web2.0 technologies will define and be defined by the skill requirements of the 21st century workforce. It is time to understand whether models have emerged for using these tools that are superior to traditional classroom teaching alone and what are the best approaches for the practitioner to implement them.”
Among the web 2.0 technologies, we believe that Diigo provides a unique collaborative research and learning platform that will be valuable in all aspects of information processing, from discovering, digesting, organizing, sharing, collaborating to interacting, which are all essential skills for 21st centuary workforce.
With the release of the first phase of Diigo Educator Accounts, we look forward to collaborating with leading educators to explore the full potential of Diigo as an educational tool. Going forward, we will continue to work with our education community to define the next phase of Diigo for Education. If you’re an educator, give it a shot. And, as always, love to hear from you and let us know what you think!
Have you ever wanted to get to all the websites you visit most often or access what you’re currently working on quickly? Introducing a new toolbar feature along with the latest upgrade: “Quick Access Filter“. It offers a very flexible way to filter and access links based on 4 different filter types:
Recent ~ your most recent bookmarks
Unread ~ ones that you marked unread during bookmarking for further review
Tag(s) ~ show recent bookmarks with these tag(s)
List ~ show bookmarks in one of your lists
By clicking the “Add a filter” button (see circled above), select a filter type and enter the criteria. Once that filter is created, click to get instant access to what you need right away. You can even use “Open All in Tabs‘ to open up all webpages at once.
You can re-arrange the filter buttons by drag and drop. To remove a filter, just right-click, and click the pop-out “Remove this filter” to confirm the deletion action.
Lastly, just like any of the Diigo toolbar buttons, you can access & customize what you need on the toolbar by opening up “Options” on the toolbar. See here for more detail.
Please give the new “Quick Access Filter” a try, and let us know what you think.
(Note: Quick Access Filter is available on the latest Diigo FF toolbar. IE version will be forthcoming shortly.)
============================================== UPDATE 1 (Aug 16, 8AM): Upgrade in progress…
UPDATE 2 (Aug 16, 5PM): Although earlier we have alerted users in our blog / user forum / user dashboard area about the scheduled downtime / upgrade that’s going on now, some users have emailed or tweeted, wondering why the downtime is taking so long. Don’t worry - all is going as planned. Please note that this is not just a regular site maintenance, but a major server and database upgrade to provide you with speedier performance and to support Diigo’s rapidly growing user base. We hope to have the site rollout in a few more hours. Please also note that bookmarking during the server downtime won’t be saved.
UPDATE 3 (Aug 16, 10PM): Site is back.
UPDATE 4 (Aug 16, 10:15PM): Heavy backend computation at the moment - rebuilding the tag search index (any tag-related search | feed & speed will be temporarily affected)… We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause. Thanks for your understanding.
UPDATE 5 (Aug 17, 11:00AM): New Diigo FF toolbar feature: Quick Access Filter (see here)
UPDATE 6 (Aug 17, 2:00PM): Some users reported toolbar signin issue. Look like a mac issue. Looking into it now.
UPDATE 7 (Aug 18, 6:00AM): FF mac signin issue should be resolved. Please reinstall the latest toolbar and advise.
UPDATE 8 (Aug 18, 7:00AM): Tag search re-indexing completed. You should be able to access your tags data now. Full text search re-indexing will probably take another day or so (ie. search box on the upper right hand corner not functional yet.)
UPDATE 9 (Aug 18, 9:00AM): Group email alert service resumed.
UPDATE 10 (Aug 19, 6:00AM): Daily blog post service resumed.
Please email us or report to our user forum any issue that you have noticed. Thanks
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On Friday, Aug 15 starting from 11pm PDT (Saturday, Aug 16, 6:00 am GMT), Diigo will be unavailable while we conduct a major backend upgrade to provide better performance, and in preparation for what’s coming up in the pipeline…
Thanks for your patience while we make this upgrade to make Diigo better and better, and thanks for your continued support!
Your Diigo Team
ps: Follow us on Twitter for whispers, early news, reviews, and updates from Diigo!
What’s so neat about this video podcast is that instead of using a bulky camcorder, Scoble recorded the conversation / demo using a cell phone video (see picture.) Also, the whole interview was streamed live to the internet while they were talking:
I am on my way to NECC / EduBloggerCon conference in San Antonio, Texas, June 28th - July 2nd. NECC is the place for hands-on, interactive learning about how technology and the latest Web 2.0 innovations can transform teaching and learning. Over 18,000 people are expected this year, wow!
I’m very excited about this trip. Why? I’ve befriended with lots of Diigo users, and many of us have been interacting “virtually” for a while. While internet certainly has removed the distance barrier and made many incredible things possible, still, nothing is quite like a face-to-face meeting. So, very much looking forward to finally meeting up with a bunch of friends in person for the first time, and sure hope to make new acquaintances with a lot more people in the next few days as well!
This Sat, June 28, I will attend the EduBloggercon (9am - 5pm) at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. For most of the NECC conference, besides attending some interesting keynotes and sessions, I will also be hanging out a lot on the NECC unplugged / Blogger’s Cafe. I will be wearing a Diigo T-shirt, so hopefully it’s easier to spot me. If you are at NECC, I’d love to meet you in person. I’ve created a NECC profile http://www.necc2008.org/profile/MaggieTsai Twitter, IM, DMS (diigo messaging system), or email me if you’d like to get together and/or if you’d like to see Diigo in action.
I cannot wait to meet a bunch of educators who are passionate about learning and exploring ways to integrate latest technology innovation to transform education and make a difference for their students!
While Diigo toolbar and Diigolet are powerful tools that substantially enhance your browsing / online research experience, here are two more new ways to let you to easily add a bookmark to your diigo account directly on the website:
“Add A Bookmark”:
Go to your “My Bookmarks” section and check the upper right hand corner, copy & paste the URL in the input field, then click “Add” . You will be prompted to edit any tag(s), description, and select the list / group (optional) that you wish to add. Click “Save”, and that’s it.
New “Post to Diigo” simple Bookmarklet:
For those who need to do some rapid bookmarking or a super easy way to get started bookmarking with diigo, then try the new bookmarklet on your “Tools >> Post to Diigo” section. Follow the direction on the page to drag and drop the button to your browser.
A wedding photographer in Sichuan captured the before and after moments: (Source: http://www.chinareviewnews.com)
May 12 - A couple just took some lovely outdoor wedding shots outside of a beautiful church in Pongzho, Sichuan
When the major quake hit, lots of stones fell off the church buildings all of a sudden. Since there was no where to hide, everyone except the photographer who captured this precious moment, got down on their knee and held their head down.
Shaking stopped and dust settled. Everyone gradually stood up and looked around what a destructive force Mother Earth had just released.
What’s left of this 100 year old church.
The bride full of dust and shaken, but very blessed that everyone is all right.
These past few weeks have certainly been eventful & “earthshaking” … Diigo is a global company with our HQ in Reno, NV, USA and our R&D center in China (not outsourced, but an integral part of our team.) About 3 weeks ago, the Reno area experienced a 4.7 earthquake, and in a private conversation someone from out of the area joked that’s “shaking” on how well received the latest Diigo release has been.
On Monday, May 12, at 2:28pm Beijing time (6:28 GMT), a major earthquake, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, jolted southwestern China’s Sichuan Province. To give some perspective on how severe 7.9 magnitude is on the Richter scale: according to wikipedia, it’s equivalent to 600 megatons of TNT explosive, or energy released by the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption! Mother Earth has lot of unsettling energy!
Our R&D center is based in Chengdu, only 90 km from the epicenter. When the quake hit, our whole team was still in a heated discussion on features in our regular international conference meeting (yes, we work very long and odd hours, and skype / gtalk are wonderful must-have tools …) All of a sudden, very loud rattling sound came through. Our team in Chengdu said calmly over skype, “There is an earthquake, we have to get out of here.” So I thought, well, it must be another one of those small tremors, so I kept skype connected, hoping to hear from them again soon.
Shortly, news broke - a major earthquake, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, hit the area, and Chengdu is only 90 kilometers from the epicenter! That got our US team really worried. Fortunately, we were able to connect with our Chengdu team a few hours later, and learned they are all safe and sound.
And it looks like they all had a unforgettable experience. One team member recalled, “As I ran down the stairs from the 27th floor of the 33-story highrise, the building twisted and turned, bubbled up and down, for a few minutes which really felt like forever. The building was making those scary cracking sound, making me think that it would just fall any minute before I got out.”
While our team members are all fine, their office and apartment buildings have suffered some damage, and being such tall buildings, we judged that it would not be safe to stay there while there are after-shocks still happening daily. So they are now temporarily housed in the ground floor of a hotel, with a rather unstable internet connection. So until they settle down more comfortably, our new development work will be slowed down quite a bit.
Our latest upgrade happened in the midst of communication interruption, so we had to temporarily roll back. All very bad timing and sorry about any temporary inconvenience. The good thing is that our operation is all based in the US, so that our service is not interrupted. Some of our teammates are certainly a bit shaken up, but knock on wood, everyone is all fine, and we will all be back to full swing in no time!
The earthquake was so strong and devastating, it was felt throughout very widespread areas, destroyed many buildings, as well as infrastructure like roads, bridges, communication towers, etc. There are also tons of after shocks, the highest one measuring at 6.1 magnitude. According to the latest official report, over 14,000 people have died, over 25,000 people still buried under collapsed buildings, and many more have been injured or are missing. Most sadly, many children were in school at the time, got buried under the rubble of their collapsed school buildings, and precious moments are escaping for their rescue. A Major calamity indeed!
The past few days have not been easy for me, as I have been traveling on the road, and just have a chance to sit down and write this blog post now. Our prayers are with all the people impacted by this tragedy. We’re doing Diigo because we thought we could make some difference to the world of internet users… Given the severity of this Sichuan earthquake, and at time like this, one realizes how precious our life is and what our loved ones, friends, and families mean to us. We are sharing our story, and doing what we can as individuals and as a company for each other, and for people of the affected community. We’d also like to appeal and urge people to consider donating & helping the needy. Please share this news. For more information, please visit the American Red Cross.
Thank you very much, and we appreciate your kind support!
We had a blast meeting with David LaPlante, chairman of the State of Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology and CEO of Twelve Horses and his crew, Mike Henderson, Earl Spriggs & Leilani Schweitzer. Twelve Horses is a full-service relationship marketing and messaging company specializing in designing interactive communication solutions.
It’s great knowing that many workgroups and companies are discovering and finding Diigo to be quite useful for both personal productivity and effective collaborative research… reasons that inspire us to create Diigo in the very first place. Besides “What is / Why Diigo”, we also chatted about “Why Reno / Tahoe”
To find out the inside scoop, be sure to check out our interview and podcast
Emily Barney has made this awesome youtube video about Social Bookmarking and diigo. It’s a great companion to our V3 intro video and answers many “why” and “how” questions for some users. Check it out! (Thanks Emily!)
For the past several months, in consultation with dozens of educators, we have been researching ways to make Diigo more accessible to the education community, and to make Diigo a more integral part of collaborative learning in the school environment.
Wade met up with 
Go to your “My Bookmarks” section and check the upper right hand corner, copy & paste the URL in the input field, then click “Add” . You will be prompted to edit any tag(s), description, and select the list / group (optional) that you wish to add. Click “Save”, and that’s it.
