Webslides on Diigo (online resource)

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May 25, 2008 by Paul Hamilton

Of all the social bookmarking services I’ve looked at, I think I like Diigo best. I particularly like the ability to highlight and annotate shared web pages. I’m not yet using Diigo to full advantage, and this post is not really about Diigo.

I want to point out the visual way you can share lists of websites. In special education, we’ve long known that many people with “special needs” require visual supports in order to learn effectively. I believe, however, that most of us learn better when visual supports are available. So, I’m discussing a tool here that may be of value to almost anyone. It’s definitely worth a look.

Webslides is Diigo’s very slick option for creating and sharing sets of bookmarked websites as interactive slideshows. With Diigo, I can organize my bookmarks into lists. Any list can then be shown as a “webslide” presentation.

Each website on a list is represented by the actual page that has been bookmarked. Seeing the page provides far more information than just seeing the website’s address in a list! The slideshow is interactive in that it can be paused and you can go directly to the website via a live link in the bottom left corner of each “slide”. The slideshow can advance automatically, and you choose how long each slide is viewed. Or, you can move through the slideshow manually, and you can also choose to go back to any previous slide.

Clicking the button below will take you to the slideshow of my list of 55 websites that that I think support science curricula. I would appreciate your comments on this format if you check it out. (If you are reading this post in a Reader, you may not see the button . Please click here instead.)

Slideshows of listed websites can be shared in several convenient ways. Each slideshow has its own URL, and that can be shared. A widget, such as the button I’ve used here, can be embedded on a website, wiki, or blog. Or, the slideshow itself can even be embedded, but I found the slideshow too large to embed effectively on this blog. Embedding the full slideshow worked much better on a wider wiki page.

Posted in Blogging, Content and Curriculum, Digital Story-Telling, Downloadable Program, Free Resources, Media & IT, Online Resources, Presentation Tool, Productivity, Science, UDL, Web 2.0, Windows | Tagged bookmark, bookmarks, diigo, interactive, slideshow, slideshows, visual, webslides | 9 Comments

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9 Responses to “Webslides on Diigo (online resource)”

on 25 May 2008 at 11:31 am1 Larry Ferlazzo

Paul,

Great slideshow and wonderful science resources! My only reservation is that it doesn’t appear to allow the creator, or anyone else, to leave comments, descriptions, or instructions — or is that capacity there and I’m just missing it?

That’s one reason I like online applications like Daft Doggy.

Larry
on 25 May 2008 at 11:38 am2 Lesley Edwards

I have used the slideshow feature and find it particularly useful to show a group of sites to a class. One of the English teachers in my school has her students compile a list of sites that would reflect a character or author. Slideshow would be the perfect tool for this. One thing I don’t like about diigo is that when you join a group you see that groups comments on web pages you bring up. I’m not sure if there is a way to turn this comment feature off or not, I’m still exploring.
on 25 May 2008 at 12:43 pm3 Paul Hamilton

Thanks Larry,

I was remiss in not pointing out that if you have your own Diigo account, you can highlight and leave comments on the web pages in the slideshow. You can have conversations right on the webpage about the page content. I believe you do have to go directly to the webpage in order to annotate. In other words, you can’t just annotate a slide in the slideshow.

The power of webslides is mainly in the ability to visually show sets of links to websites. This works so much better for me than looking at a list of text links.

–Paul
on 25 May 2008 at 3:40 pm4 Paul Hamilton

Lesley,

Thanks for sharing how you’ve used Webslides in the classroom. I think there are probably many places where it could be helpful.

–Paul
on 25 May 2008 at 6:33 pm5 Marie

As you said Paul, this is a great tool to facilitate visualisation of the site which gives more of an instant overview than seeing the link. On viewing the sites I’d prefer to manually move them forward as it was a little annoying to have it automatically move to the next slide when I found one I wanted to explore a little more. The resources are wonderful!
on 25 May 2008 at 7:31 pm6 Paul Hamilton

Marie. You do have the option of manually moving through the slide show. After hitting the pause button, you can move forward or backward through the show at your own pace. –Paul
on 28 May 2008 at 7:20 pm7 Brian Wojcik

Ok…I have been hesitant to try Diigo because I was pretty set in my ways with del.icio.us but after reading your post yesterday, I thought I’d give it a shot. Eighteen hours later, I am still just really enthralled with the service. I’ve highlighted, bookmarked, joined groups, created a group, shared booksmarks and even created a webslide show.

We are editing our site content and I worked to get everyone set up on diigo and created a webslide show of all of our pages. We are using that as a means of communicating what needs to be changed through highlights and annotations…

Wow…

Thanks for the resource!
on 29 May 2008 at 9:14 am8 Paul Hamilton

Hi Brian. I don’t think it has to be Diigo or del.icio.us. As I wrote in my post, I’m not using Diigo to its potential, but I’m pretty sure that you can set Diigo so that what you bookmark there also goes to del.icio.us. –Paul
on 29 May 2008 at 9:32 am9 Brian Wojcik

Hey…thanks for the heads up. I just set it so I am not bookmarking in Diigo and del.icio.us. I am so excited!