Diigo

Social bookmarking encourages discovery, collaboration, and sharing

Learning rating

Community rating

Based on 18 reviews

Privacy rating

Expert evaluation by Common Sense

Grades

7–12

Subjects & Skills

Critical Thinking, English Language Arts

Great for

Productivity, Social Media

Price: Free, Paid
Platforms: Web

Pros: Customization options and social features help students learn key Web skills such as curating and sharing online content.

Cons: Users need to be logged into Diigo and stay within one browser tab to use the system; advanced searches can turn up questionable content, and there isn’t much guidance on selecting sources.

Bottom Line: With a Diigo educator account, teachers and students have a safe space to organize, customize, and share Web content while learning about a variety of subjects.

The sharing aspect may be of particular interest to educators, who can use the site as a classroom tool by signing up for a Diigo educator account. Teachers can create student accounts and set up a Diigo group for classmates to access group bookmarks and forums. The functionality lets educators highlight key text and images, gather pages into thematic groups, and encourage online conversations about the materials. In addition, collaborative groups allow students to gather and annotate their own resources, strengthening their research skills. Teachers can use their educator account to create assignments that will boost students’ reading skills and encourage teamwork and collaborative discussions.

The educator-created accounts also offer additional safety measures. Pre-set privacy settings prevent anyone but teachers and students from using the group to communicate. The only ads are from education-related sponsors, and public search engines can’t access student profiles.

Diigo has evolved from a simple bookmarking tool into a collaborative destination (website or Chrome app) for collecting, commenting on, and sharing information online. Users add the Diigo bookmarklet (Diigolet) to the browser's bookmark bar and then use it to save pages to a personal library section on Diigo. When you find a webpage worth bookmarking, just click on the Diigolet button to add a sticky note to the page, highlight certain words in one of four colors, and save it to your Diigo library. Users can also designate the page as something to read later or share it with other users via Facebook, Twitter, or email. You can also search for content through Diigo using Google or by typing in a term and searching other users’ bookmark libraries.

Kids learn how to manage online content with Diigo's various features. They can search for, bookmark, organize, annotate, collaborate, and share resources they find online. They can also learn about numerous subjects by conducting searches with Google or other users' libraries. User groups exist for nearly 20 general categories, including business and finance, entertainment, music, hobbies, sports, religion, relationships, science, and travel. Moving from searches to groups to your library can be a little confusing, but overall, Diigo offers a great toolkit for developing key tech skills.

Diigo offers reading and communication skills practice to users who comment on and share bookmarked pages. It also gives teachers a way to share relevant, pre-screened website content, with notes to reinforce any lessons in the text. Group research assignments can help kids learn to collaborate and express multiple viewpoints when discussing which pages are the most applicable.

Learning Rating

Overall Rating
Engagement

The list-based design isn't too dynamic, and ads that precede Google searches may confuse users. However, the collaboration and sharing features should inspire repeat visits. 

Pedagogy

Kids organize and manage online content as they bookmark, annotate, and share resources. The tool is great for collaborating and sharing ideas, but kids won't get any tips or instruction on research practices or identifying credible sources.

Support

Plenty of how-to videos help users figure out the features, but as far as tips on how to best use the tools for school, work, or personal projects, kids won't find much to guide them.

Common Sense reviewer

Community Rating

Great collaborative note-taking tool!

I think it is a great tool to help students pick out main ideas and make notes on the things they highlight. The one thing that can be frustrating is that if one student highlights something another student can not highlight over top of what another student said. I think the document gets messy with all the highlighting that occurs. I overall really enjoy using this app.

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Privacy Rating

Data Safety How safe is this product?

  • Users cannot interact with trusted users.
  • Personal information can be not displayed publicly.
  • User-created content is not filtered for personal information before being made publicly visible.

Data Rights What rights do I have to the data?

  • Users cannot create or upload content.
  • Processes to access or review user data are not available.
  • Processes to modify data are not available for authorized users.

Ads & Tracking Are there advertisements or tracking?

  • Personal information is not shared for third-party marketing.
  • Traditional or contextual advertisements are not displayed.
  • Personalised advertising is not displayed.

Continue reading about this tool's privacy practices, including data collection, sharing, and security.

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