DIIgo & Delicious

I was pretty well sold on Social Bookmarking via Delicious when I checked out Diigo. They are similar in their use and features. Both have great application for professional collaboration and student/teacher communication.
Diigo seems to have some features that make me reconsider which one to use for my Spanish I classes next year. One feature I like is the annotation tools. To highlight particular text or pictures as well as add post-it notes with comments and hints for students would be helpful as a teacher. I also like the ability to get a snapshot of the website that can be accessed and used even if the website becomes "no longer available" in the future. Any teacher who has ever had a website move or expire after they have planned an entire lesson around it will understand this feature's practicality.
Diigo has has Educator Accounts with some special tools not available to others. Using Diigo, a teacher can easily up a private network for a class with safety considerations created by Diigo. For someone who worries about internet safety and is not able to create these features herself, I love this feature! A teacher can even link several classes, a feature I think will be helpful to me when my colleague and I will both be teaching the same level. Even the plethora of irritating ads are limited for students with the Educator account PLN. This is great if you have any students who are easily distracted (think "Ooh, shiny")reducing attention diverters is a great help in increasing on-task behavior.
Several applications of a PLN with my students jumped in my head almost immediately. This would be a great way to organize recommended resources such as online English-Spanish dictionaries, grammar help sites, teacher-created podcasts of vocabulary, etc. it would also bew a great place to help students connect to the online textbook we are using next year to save the cost of adding over 150 books at $60 each for next year. This would also be a great way to organize a series of webquests using the tag systems and the annotation tools. The collaboration tools between teachers and classes will be helpful for everyone, too.
Overall, I find delicious and diigo a more productive web 2.0 tool than facebook or twitter because of the broader range of apllicable scenarios, but there is still time for me to alter my perception as we continue exploring web 2.0 tools. Besides, as arecent piece I added on my PLN in delicious stated, "Teachers need to stop telling students to power down the 21st Century technology." We need to embrace the tools we can or we risk alienating our students and undereducating them. I need time to develop my skills as I realize my prowess is less than that of my students but I am working on it. My growth since school started this fall is greater than any year since my first. With some time and energy applied over the next few months, I will start next year more techologically integretaed than I have ever been. I hope this increases my students engagement and success.

Delicious

work with people with a wide variety of technology/web 2.0 skills. Some are extremely savvy and have had a PLN for years, others are on Facebook several times a day, others fear the exhausting task of searching for good content on the web and others struggle to do more than e-mail.
Ina recent conversation in which I was sharing some of what I am learning with one individual who is fairly tech savvy I commented about working on my Delicious bookmarks. She asked me "What makes them delicious - they included home delivery of chocolate and peanut butter () understanding of the my favorite naughty treat)?" Thinking she was joking I just laughed ... until I realized she was unaware of what Delicious was. She was intrigued and asked to talk about it some more. She liked the idea of seeing what else was on the website that she could use. I was able to share with her my (devloping) prowess with Delicious and its use for professional collaboration.
Asa teacher on wheels because I share classrooms rather than having one of my own I like the flexibility of accessing all my favorites with other computers and when I am at home. Many times I wished I could access my Favorites when creating emergency sub plans at 2 am becuase one of my kids had just gotten sick and I wouldn't be going to work in the morning. Had I had my Favorites transferred to my Delicious account I would be able to do that. I have been trying to transfer them but am finding it an inconvenient process with the restrictions at school. IF ANYONE HAS A FASTER METHOD THAN GOING TO EACH SITE AND THEN SAVING TO DELICIOUS, I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR ABOUT IT!
I can think of great uses of this as a way for my students to access all the websites I prefer they use for class projects. Next year I will again have first year students as well as exploratory like this year. I will also have a new hire colleague in my department so I think having a collaborative social bookmarking site for us to use with be of great benefit.

wikis

Wikis seem like a good collaboration tool for class and for teacher communication. I like the opportunity to keep everything on one document rather than having it as a mess in your email. I see this helpful for students in my classes as they work on their written communication skills in Spanish. They could help each other find errors in a submitted starting document, share research notes on a group or even on individual projects. In the past I have had students research different aspects surrounding Picasso's infamous Guernica. A wiki would have been a great place for them to share all of their research since so many topics were interwoven. Students could even share drafts of their project for peer editing and revision so what they presented was ploished. I see this as a great monitor for the teacher that students are making progress by the record-keeping aspect in which times of edit are kept and colorcoding can be used for work. I think this may be better than a blog because it makes it seems less like one expert with followers and more like a community of learners. This would help some of my more shy students gain confidence in their ability and their contribution - rather than the vocal and attention seeking students dominating the discussion.