Diigo & Hotlists

For more years than I care to count I've been using annotated hotlists as a way to: One, develop a list of safe sites for students to use in their research, and Two teach students how to examine websites for content, appearance, etc. as a way for them to assess and describe websites - for themselves and others.

I'm still committed to this approach, but Social Bookmarking Tools , Diigo or delicious for example, provides another arrow in the quiver of creating effective research tools.

I'm particularly interested in their collective and collaborative aspects. For example, assigning a small group of students finding, describing, and tagging 10 sites on a particular topic. Two students could be Researchers, one could be the Editor, with the jobs rotating. The activity would present the group with the tasks of finding the appropriate sites, writing brief, accurate, and complete descriptions, and creating tags. The assignment could be coupled with a wiki for on-line discussions. Finally, since their work - on the wiki and the ning - would be public, it would provide others students and the teacher to make comments, suggestions, etc.