Ok, so maybe that should read as del.icio.us. Or perhaps not, after all that spelling is so 2007 and we are clearly in 2011. :-) I opted for delicious and I'm still working on getting it all together.
This week's assignment was to dive into social bookmarking. I had seen the "share this" for Facebook, Twitter, Diig as well as del.icio.us but didn't see a point in the bookmarking aspect. Usually, when I get a new computer I just transfer all my information over and wa-la, no problem. But, there have been times that I was away from home and I've needed to get to a bookmarked item and I couldn't because it doesn't come up on web search. (Companies are so weird with their intranet sites!)
Even with that prior experience, I honestly didn't see the point in bookmarking my bookmarks on a site. That is, until I was reading Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, by Will Richardson. In Chapter 6 he described the point I was missing. Imagining the Internet as a giant library, the way to link to applicable sites could work best when users set the tags and NOT the developers of the sites. It was through that mental picture that it came together.
If I want to find the most bookmarked page (and possibly, the most useful) for writing a paper in proper APA style I would go to "Home" and then on the right side, type in, "APA." Once I hit enter it gives me the most recent entries, but I'd prefer to have the most popular, so I click on popular and it re-orders the results. What is interesting to me is that it didn't give me the most bookmarked item first. But, when looking at how many bookmarked a site, I could see which one is the most beneficial to me. I don't like "bots" creating my bibliography. It doesn't matter how many times I do a research paper, I always have to refer to the Internet for examples so I can write it properly. I want to do the work - not just feed info into a bot. Of course, the fact that I'm not retaining the information leads me to wonder why I don't just go the bot route? But I digress...
Now that I can see the potential, I can definitely see how it could help in a classroom setting. I think we should set a tag for our class and when we do find something of interest, add that tag. By doing that our instructor will have information for his next class and it could be continually built on. Actually, not just by THIS class, but for the COURSE. Yeah, lots of emphasis - but I'm an emphasis kinda person. :)
I can see where my tags can make a difference. Adding the word cloud just emphasizes what the main words are, it could help determine the best tag for your site or blog.
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2 comments:
Your page is awesome, I like the way you write, it's as if you were having a regular conversation, "just talking". I haven't tried the word cloud yet, I got it from your shared items on my reader page, thanks! Since you mentioned it, I have begun to notice the large number of bookmarks on certain sites on Delicious. Please add me to your people list. TTFN!
Thanks Terri! Funny thing, I sent an email to Rob the other day and asked him if I was a little too "just like talking" in my blog! So it makes me smile that you hear my voice.
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