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To complete Thing 14 you must:
A. Learn how social bookmarking works
B. Understand tagging
C. Explore Delicious
D. Create your account and begin bookmarking
E.. Reflect on Thing 14 on your blog
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A. Learn About Social Bookmarking
Watch this video to better understand social bookmarking.
If you can't see the video, click here to watch it on the Common Craft website.
Then read this article (pdf) from EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's (ELI's) "7 Things You Should Know About..." series to learn more about social bookmarking.
B. Understand Tagging
In some of our previous Things we've already mentioned tags – when searching for blogs using Technorati and when searching for and labeling photos in Flickr. Tagging is the process of assigning keywords or “tags” to online content. In the same way you stick labels on physical objects, you use tags to label digital elements such as web links, blog posts, photos, or other user-generated content. Once you assign a tag to an object, you can easily find that object later by searching the tag. You can assign multiple tags to a single object, and different people can assign different tags to the same object. Tagging is very “Web 2.0” because it supports social networking, sharing, and empowering users as well as producers of information. Tagging represents a significant shift in the way digital data is sorted, saved, searched, and shared in the 21st century.
Other terms related to tagging are folksonomy and tag cloud. Folksonomy is derived from "folk" + "taxonomy" and is very different from traditional subject indexing. Perhaps the most important strength of a folksonomy is that it directly reflects the vocabulary of the users. A tag cloud is simply a visual representation of a collection of tags with font size representing frequency of use.
Before you start saving and tagging your own bookmarks, read Thirteen Tips for Effective Tagging.
C. Explore Delicious
One of the greatest advantages of social bookmarking is that you can access and add to your collection of bookmarks from any computer. Here are a few ideas for using Delicious in your teaching:
- Build a shared reading list
- Conduct research and share with peers
- Share student bookmarks for a classroom project
- Use a group tag to share resources with a working grouup
- Share links to current news items related to classroom discussions.
Many users find that the real power of Delicious is in the social networking aspect, which allows you to see how other users have tagged similar links and also discover other websites that may be of interest to you. You can think of it as peering into another user's filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool, each user's filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network. Watch the following video and then spend some time exploring Delicious on your own.
D. Create Your Delicious Account and Begin Bookmarking
It's time to create your account. Here's a video tutorial to walk you through the process.
Now you can begin saving bookmarks. Watch the following video to learn how, and then save at least 10 bookmarks to your account.
Another bookmarking tool that allows you to collect, highlight and store online is Diigo. It hasn't been around as long as Delicious, but many educators are moving over to Diigo community because of its features.
E. Reflect - Blog Prompts for Thing 14
Include your Delicious username in this blog post so that others can view the bookmarks that you have chosen to share. Then reflect on how you think social bookmarking can be used in your teaching. Does Delicious seem to be a tool that can enhance your productivity?
Share your thoughts about tagging. Is tagging a useful way to organize your digital resources and why? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages? What is important to think about before assigning tags to bookmarks or other Internet content?
