Connecting to the Classroom

There is always a question I keep in the back of my mind every time I learn something new related to technology or attend a conference. How can I use what I have learned to help connect my students to the world. One idea that I have been trying out on a recent project is setting my class site up with a digital bookmarking site. Now it may not seem like much but it allows my students to share site with each other when they work on a site. I have it set on private right now but I could open this up to whole Diigo community. When I introduced the students to the site the other day students were setting up their accounts and immediately they were talking with one another in the chat section of the page. Students want to be connected and they want to share ideas with one another but they don't always want to do this in the classroom. I am thinking about eventually opening this site up. I have also wanted to find more ways.