Week 2: Collaboration with Social Bookmarks

[Harold Jarche]

This forum is focused on how we can use social bookmarks for our work or for learning. Some of the questions to date include:

How can you get faculty/co-workers interested in social bookmarking?

How can I share or network resources?

How can I share lists?

[Matthew Bibby]

How can you get faculty/co-workers interested in social bookmarking?

I have encouraged co-workers to use delicious in the following way:

- Whenever I send them a link of interest I suggest that they check out my delicious site

- I also (now) pop a link to http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english in case they do not know about social bookmarking

- I set up specific tags of interest (eg. both my sisters are teachers so I have a 'school' tag for them)

How can I share or network resources?

With delicious this is easy, go to a site of interest (delicious.com/delicioususername) and press the Add to my Network button in the top right of your screen.

Once this is done that users bookmarks will show up in your Network page.

You then have the option when tagging bookmarks to include 'Network Tags' which share the link with the user you choose (e.g. if I was part of your network then the tag, for:mfubib would share the link with me.)

How can I share lists?

I often forward my delicious site to people who work in the same industry to encourage the sharing of resources. My site is http://delicious.com/mfubib.

Cheers,

Matthew Bibby

[Lore Reß]

I am using http://www.mister-wong.de/user/lress/ to store my bookmarks:

- for personal use

- I use special tags for my seminar participants

- sometimes I use social bookmark plattforms for research

[Meegan Lillis]

I really want to set-up, or clean-up my current account in delicious, to have a nice place for the faculty I work with to go to learn about social bookmarking, but also find links that might help them (these would be related to instructional technology as thats my job, so links to eInstruction and their CPS system and articles on how to use clickers and best practices).

One problem with my current account is that I only have the one and I use it a lot for person bookmarking. Its not a big deal, I don't make many links private, but at the same time, I don't think everyone who goes to my delicious is interested in what knitting patterns I have found that I like!

Any suggestions? I don't think I want to handle two different accounts, but maybe I need to - using two different services.

[Melanie Jennings]

Disclaimer: I am not paid by Diigo in any way; I am just a devotee of this terrific tool!

I don't want to take this discussion off topic, but for collaboration with social bookmarks, I'm of the opinion that Diigo is the way to go! It allows you to not only bookmark sites (tagging, writing a site description, sharing, etc.), but to also highlight text on the site, which other users can see, and even add "sticky notes" to add your thoughts or questions to your colleagues/students, to which they can reply within the site itself. This, to me, is revolutionary in an instructional setting.

You can also create discussions within Diigo (but I find other avenues, like wikis, to work better for those discussions), simultaneously bookmark to other services (such as your tried-and-true del.icio.us account), and set up friends and groups, which allow a group of people (students/colleagues) to discuss web information separate from the world at large.

By the way, they are currently in a closed beta for an educational version which has selective ads and easy student account set-up.

I believe this is far and away the best social bookmarking tool for education. If anyone is interested in doing some testing of the tool, I'd be happy to collaborate with you, so you can see how it works.

Melanie Jennings

[Michele Martin]

Hi Melanie--I thought that Diigo might come up here as I know a lot of educators are using it. :-) Would you be willing to start another Forum specifically to talk about Diigo? I think people might be interested and if you have some good info and resources to share, that would be great!

Melanie Jennings said:

Disclaimer: I am not paid by Diigo in any way; I am just a devotee of this terrific tool!

I don't want to take this discussion off topic, but for collaboration with social bookmarks, I'm of the opinion that Diigo is the way to go! It allows you to not only bookmark sites (tagging, writing a site description, sharing, etc.), but to also highlight text on the site, which other users can see, and even add "sticky notes" to add your thoughts or questions to your colleagues/students, to which they can reply within the site itself. This, to me, is revolutionary in an instructional setting.

You can also create discussions within Diigo (but I find other avenues, like wikis, to work better for those discussions), simultaneously bookmark to other services (such as your tried-and-true del.icio.us account), and set up friends and groups, which allow a group of people (students/colleagues) to discuss web information separate from the world at large.

By the way, they are currently in a closed beta for an educational version which has selective ads and easy student account set-up.

I believe this is far and away the best social bookmarking tool for education. If anyone is interested in doing some testing of the tool, I'd be happy to collaborate with you, so you can see how it works.

Melanie Jennings

[Melanie Jennings]

I also do IT training for school districts, and I tried keeping up two different accounts for a while. It was a nightmare... So, I just make sure to mark any really personal sites as private, and then when in training sessions, I just make the disclaimer that, "Allowing someone to look into your bookmarks is just like allowing someone to look into the junk drawer in your kitchen. Just understand that you will find all sorts of information in my bookmarks. You'll see that I'm a wanna-be crafter, that I just bought 26 baby chickens and am learning how to care for them, and that I'm passionate about educational technology. Just understand that you're looking in my kitchen junk drawer. Never know what you'll find in there!"

The only situation that makes me a little nervous is that lots of my bookmarks deal with homeschooling (which I'm considering for my oldest daughter). Let's just say that homeschooling is generally not a favorite topic of public school educators... But I've just made the call that in this connected world, I'm not going to try to hide big parts of who I am. Let the chips fall where they may.

Melanie

Meegan Lillis said:

I really want to set-up, or clean-up my current account in delicious, to have a nice place for the faculty I work with to go to learn about social bookmarking, but also find links that might help them (these would be related to instructional technology as thats my job, so links to eInstruction and their CPS system and articles on how to use clickers and best practices).

One problem with my current account is that I only have the one and I use it a lot for person bookmarking. Its not a big deal, I don't make many links private, but at the same time, I don't think everyone who goes to my delicious is interested in what knitting patterns I have found that I like!

Any suggestions? I don't think I want to handle two different accounts, but maybe I need to - using two different services.

[Melanie Jennings]

Sorry for getting off the del.icio.us track in my first post. Here are my answers to the discussion prompts.

In order to get faculty interested in social bookmarking, I point out the fact that you can use the social bookmarking community as a peer selected search engine. Teachers always want to find the resources that are the very best in as short a time as possible. They recognize that searching the web is not a very quality-controlled experience. If someone in the network has bookmarked a site, that person must have found it to be of some value. Therefore, searching through the tagged sites within a bookmarking community is, in effect, searching through a subset of the greater web which have been pre-selected for quality. Also, I can "Meet People Like Me" whose tag cloud closely resembles mine. By friending those whose research interests match mine, I will have added access to their web research activities - and they to mine! Collaboration at its best. My teachers appreciate anything that helps them find the best information/sites in the least amount of time.

Hmm... sharing or networking resources... I find that I have to be "on purpose" about developing my network. I have to search out those who share the same interests as I do, particularly leaders in the field. Those are the ones whose web research I want to be following! In turn, as those who are lower on the educational technology "food chain" than I am will benefit from my sites. The food chain analogy is not meant to be derogatory in any way. I'm just saying that ed tech is my primary area of interest, and I have more time to devote to researching this area than the teachers who attend my training sessions. In this way, they don't have to spend hours to find the very best web resources in educational technology. They can look at mine. The food chain goes in the other direction for their areas of expertise! I am friends with with some great content area teachers whose bookmarks I regularly pilfer through for the best sites in those areas!

Sharing lists is simple. For those who are not part of del.icio.us (or in my case, Diigo), I can just send them to a link for a specific tag or tag set (http://www.diigo.com/user/melaniej/bio1114). This allows them to see all of my bookmarks tagged for a specific purpose, along with my site comments. Or, I can create an actual "List" and share that. Creating the more formal List allows me to put the sites in a particular order and even make a WebSlides presentation out of it (which allows even non-Diigo users to see my highlights and sticky notes which are normally invisible to those who are not signed in to Diigo).

Melanie

[Melanie Jennings]

Will do. I don't know why I've become so captivated by this tool... But it's definitely one of my favorites.

Michele Martin said:

Hi Melanie--I thought that Diigo might come up here as I know a lot of educators are using it. :-) Would you be willing to start another Forum specifically to talk about Diigo? I think people might be interested and if you have some good info and resources to share, that would be great!

Melanie Jennings said:

Disclaimer: I am not paid by Diigo in any way; I am just a devotee of this terrific tool!

I don't want to take this discussion off topic, but for collaboration with social bookmarks, I'm of the opinion that Diigo is the way to go! It allows you to not only bookmark sites (tagging, writing a site description, sharing, etc.), but to also highlight text on the site, which other users can see, and even add "sticky notes" to add your thoughts or questions to your colleagues/students, to which they can reply within the site itself. This, to me, is revolutionary in an instructional setting.

You can also create discussions within Diigo (but I find other avenues, like wikis, to work better for those discussions), simultaneously bookmark to other services (such as your tried-and-true del.icio.us account), and set up friends and groups, which allow a group of people (students/colleagues) to discuss web information separate from the world at large.

By the way, they are currently in a closed beta for an educational version which has selective ads and easy student account set-up.

I believe this is far and away the best social bookmarking tool for education. If anyone is interested in doing some testing of the tool, I'd be happy to collaborate with you, so you can see how it works.

Melanie Jennings

[Bill Graziadei, Ph.D.]

Need to think about the WHY before the WHAT and HOW through a collaborative discussion/consensus process. Not all colleagues will buy in and that's OK; but, once they have purpose and do "buy-in" then get out of the way. Ciao, Bill...

[Carla Arena]

Hi, guys, this is a quick overview of social bookmarking.

Social Bookmarking

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: diigo delicious)

[Harold Jarche]

"peer selected search engine" - now that is a term that I will use from now on! Gee maybe we'll all be talking about PSSE's from now on ;-)

This is an excellent descriptor of what social bookmarks can do for peer learning.

Melanie Jennings said:

Sorry for getting off the del.icio.us track in my first post. Here are my answers to the discussion prompts.

In order to get faculty interested in social bookmarking, I point out the fact that you can use the social bookmarking community as a peer selected search engine. Teachers always want to find the resources that are the very best in as short a time as possible. They recognize that searching the web is not a very quality-controlled experience. If someone in the network has bookmarked a site, that person must have found it to be of some value. Therefore, searching through the tagged sites within a bookmarking community is, in effect, searching through a subset of the greater web which have been pre-selected for quality. Also, I can "Meet People Like Me" whose tag cloud closely resembles mine. By friending those whose research interests match mine, I will have added access to their web research activities - and they to mine! Collaboration at its best. My teachers appreciate anything that helps them find the best information/sites in the least amount of time.

Hmm... sharing or networking resources... I find that I have to be "on purpose" about developing my network. I have to search out those who share the same interests as I do, particularly leaders in the field. Those are the ones whose web research I want to be following! In turn, as those who are lower on the educational technology "food chain" than I am will benefit from my sites. The food chain analogy is not meant to be derogatory in any way. I'm just saying that ed tech is my primary area of interest, and I have more time to devote to researching this area than the teachers who attend my training sessions. In this way, they don't have to spend hours to find the very best web resources in educational technology. They can look at mine. The food chain goes in the other direction for their areas of expertise! I am friends with with some great content area teachers whose bookmarks I regularly pilfer through for the best sites in those areas!

Sharing lists is simple. For those who are not part of del.icio.us (or in my case, Diigo), I can just send them to a link for a specific tag or tag set (http://www.diigo.com/user/melaniej/bio1114). This allows them to see all of my bookmarks tagged for a specific purpose, along with my site comments. Or, I can create an actual "List" and share that. Creating the more formal List allows me to put the sites in a particular order and even make a WebSlides presentation out of it (which allows even non-Diigo users to see my highlights and sticky notes which are normally invisible to those who are not signed in to Diigo).

Melanie

[Marco]

Here's a Slideshare/PDF of a PPT demo outlining how you can use Delicious as a way to create dynamic link/web pages. The context is Library 2.0, but I've found it a great way to show people the potential of social bookmarking for wider audiences - bookmark it once and share it across various websites, blogs, networks and more.

It’s del.icio.us: Pushing Links to Create Dynamic Web Pages

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: delicious library2.0)

I think this builds on Melanie's notion of the "peer selected search engine", where a number of people could contribute to the building of this type of knowledge repository.

It also allows for the quick and immediate sharing of useful links quickly. As the presentation suggests: "Manage a Web Link Once."

Source: Joseph, Paul (2008) It’s del.icio.us: Pushing Links to Create Dynamic Web Pages. Delivered at British Columbia Library Association Conference 2008 : "Off the Shelf and Out of the Box : Creativity in Libraries", Richmond, British Columbia (Canada). Presentation.

http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00013233/