BP_Diigo Group

Quite honestly when I first looked that the Diigo site, I thought to myself - there is no way that I will ever use this site as a tool. I set up my account and started looking at the various tools and felt that it was just not going to work for me. I am used to using my bookmarks within Safari and darn it, it has worked for me so far. Why do I need to go to another site and populate it with links? It felt to cumbersome and unnecessary. However, I decided to watch the videos and look at some of the features that Diigo utilizes outside of the website. I added the Diigolet bookmark and went to the web and began testing. While I have only been using it a short while, I admit that my first impression was probably wrong. During our Wimba session, Rena talked about it being a powerful tool for research and collaborating with others. I can see that now. As I started adding bookmarks, highlighting articles and adding tags, I started to realize that this is really a powerful tool. It is not just a tool to save time, but it is a way to gather, organize and synthesize the information I am researching. But I am seeing benefits well beyond my action research project. It is a tool that I will use professionally and personally. In the past, I would bookmark pages only to wonder where and what I bookmarked. I would then go through the annual ritual of cleaning out my bookmarks because I didn't know why I bookmarked them in the first place. Diigo looks like a tool that will definitely be a tool I will use in the future.

BP2_iGoogle Screen Shots

ETC iGoogle Site

I had been using iGoogle for several years. However, I had only been using it periodically and not as a home page. I decided that after creating all of these pages for my Full Sail project, I would now start using it as my home page.
As a home page, I will start populating it with information that I will use for educational and professional purposes. I did not know however that I could create different tabs or pages on the site. This will be very useful as I will now be able to create areas that are very specific to my interests.

iGoogle Home Page

FSO iGoogle Site

When I first signed up for iGoogle several years ago, there were very few gadgets that could be placed on the page. Most of the gadgets were very basic at that time. As I look through the gadgets now, I find many of them to be very useful. They look to provide me with the information that I will need at my finger tips. As I add tabs and gadgets over the next several months, it will be very interesting to see how much I use them. I will also be interesting to see how easy or difficult it is to break old habits and ways. Fall is a very busy time for me with lots of things going on. Not only are there lots of things going on, but there are lots of different activities happening. This means that I have huge amount of information to sort through and organize. These tools were designed to save time and effort as well as making things easier to access. I hope that this will be the case. If this is indeed the case, this site will be a huge benefit for me.

AR/CBL iGoogle Site