My Take
Overall, I really like Diigo. It is a safe site to use with students, as all activity can be kept private, is contained within the community that you establish, and you can monitor all student activity. I love that students can easily bookmark and share among themselves websites, images, and video. They are able to collaborate in school or at home and they have eagerly done both. My students and I have really enjoyed Diigo.
How I Use It
I have used Diigo for research projects with my 5th grade ICT class and with my robotics team. My entire robotics team is responsible for completing one research project related to the theme of their robotic game. Through my educator account, I created student accounts for each team member and created small groups on Diigo to divide the research responsibilities. For example, I created a "background" page for one group of students to gather resources related to background information, whereas another group would gather resources about professionals and organizations they can contact to get feedback from. I taught the students how to highlight important sections and place a comment note at that part to annotate the document with their thoughts and questions. The students would also give a brief overall summary of why they thought that article was helpful for their group. The team got really into it and even gathered resources in their own time at home and on days that the team didn't meet! This took a lot of pressure off of me to gather a body of resources.
I have also used it in my ICT class to facilitate a jigsaw puzzle activity. Different groups were assigned an article or two about a topic and were required to share their research with the class. I have also used it as a support to struggling readers by using the highlighter to highlight important parts, important vocabulary, or unfamiliar vocabulary. I would then use post-it notes to ask questions at those parts, summarize big ideas, make connections to things we've discussed in class, or define vocabulary.