OBJECTIVE

To introduce digital immigrants to the new web’s social media and get you quickly started with social bookmarking.

WHAT

Social bookmarking allows users to save, classify, share, discover, and vote on their favorite links publicly or privately on the web.

This new web2.0 service replace the old process of adding to your “favorites” by saving them onto one private computer. Not only do you now have access from any computer you also get more information saved and attached your link such as:

*title and address
*when you saved the link
*notes you can attach about website to the saved link
*how many other people also saved that site and what tags they used
*set privacy sharing settings-if you want to keep private or make public
*some services even offer social annotation tools such as highlighters and stickynotes that get attached to your save web pages.

Besides saving your links, social bookmarking has become a knowledge mangement tool for organizations and networks of people to organize and share their web information. The second utility these bookmarking services provide are they can be used as a powerful social research and annotation tool.

WHY

Ericka MenchenTrevino created a efficient visualization that provides “Three Ways to View Social Bookmarking Systems” that helps to illustrate how it all works.

Above: You have one web page with multiple users saving or “favoriting” the link under multiple tags. This first scenario demonstrates the social web2.0 principle of folksonomy. When a community is classifying and making meaning it gives a common concept or label for others to rally around and collaborate on (see Part 4: What is Folksonomy - Why & How to Tag). Another benifit is that instead of saving your link in one folder of a sub-folder you can save a link to multiple different tags which makes it much easier to find later.

Above: Here you have one tag (a popular name for a category used to label), and multiple users finding links related to that tag and sharing their filtered research to a public network. Each time some one saves a web page it also counts as a vote of popularity that creates a buzz around what members of a community find interesting. This allows the members to nominate and vote up the blogs, articles, news, video, links that they recommend and rather than having an editor at the top choosing what the consumers will be exposed to in a magazine. This principle in the web2.0 world has been named the long tail where the minority in a distribution graph can cause a “tipping point.” Social bookmarking also provides a good example of how the wisdom of the crowds principle works. When you have multiple users searching, filtering sharing, and tagging their web research a collective human intelligence builds and evolves. It is this social meaning making that will eventually push us to the web3.0 the Semantic web. This community of collaborated knowledge allows other members to tap the human research rather than mathematical algorithm computer google search. For example, for this blog I did most of my research by browsing under the “bookmarking” tag in the delicious social bookmarking community. I was able to sort through an already human filtered list of all the most popular, current, relevant, and interesting websites related to bookmarking. Furthermore most major social bookmarking services allow you to subscribe via RSS (see Part 2: What is RSS - How and Why to Subscribe) to particular tag and track in real time what the people in the live web are finding most interesting and relevant.

Above: Here you have one user with all their tags, called a tag cloud, storing and classifying all their favorite links. These tag clouds - a list of all your tags in alphabetical or most popular order - give you a reflection of your interest and a sense of how you think.

Not only do these tags provide an opportunity for self-learning but they also allow you to see tag clouds of other members in the community in which you can join their network and subscribe to their links so you can track what they are searching and saving on the web. Rashmi Sinha best illustrates this interaction with her diagram from her post A social analysis of tagging.

HOW

Choose a social bookmarking service. To right is a picture listing the names and the icons of some of the major players. Social Bookmarking Top Sites is a good blog post that lists, ranks, and describes.

For me I have been using delicious for over a year and I swear by it. A couple months ago, I added diigo which can sync with delicious and adds advanced social annotation features (highlighting and sticky notes). Recently I stumbled on edtags a social bookmarking started in Harvard specifically for the education community - very new and I am still evaluating it see Digg + Delicious + Educators = Edtag.

Once you choose and register for a social bookmarking service you will have to add a bookmarklet. This bookmarklet is normally dragged and dropped into your internet browser tool bar. This link acts as shortcut button that you click on when you have a webpage open that you want to save to your account.

Social bookmarking can be used as a knowledge management system for individual and powerful social remendation research and annotation tool that is searchable, shareable, and accessible from any computer.Now you can join in the sharing and discovery of the web’s best and lastet buzz. I promise your web browsing experience will never be the same.

EDUCATIONAL DISCUSSION

1) Imagine if the teachers, parents, and students began collaborating with their web research with social bookmarking services. Do you think mainstream education is ready?
2) If so, how can we promote and spread social bookmarking?
3) Which social bookmarking sites are you using and why?

EXTRA CREDIT HOMEWORK:

1) Video: For a great 8 min long tutorial on all the basics to get you started with delicious social bookmarking service watch- Getting Started with Del.icio.us Social Bookmarking
2) Blog: For additional information read- Social Bookmarking Services And Tools: The Wisdom Of Crowds That Organizes The Web
3) Wiki: Check out this wiki organized by an educator- Social Bookmarking Tools
4) Links: Now that you understand how social bookmarking works browse through this tagroll, a collection of websites with the same tag shared publicly, “bookmarking” tag in the delicious to see the lastest buzz on this topic in the social bookmarking community.
5) Comment: Participate in the discussion.

RELATED POSTS

A Teacher’s Tour Guide into the New Read/Write Web2.0 - 10 Part Series
- Part 1: Visual Definitions of Web2.0
- Part 2: What is RSS: How and Why to Subscribe
- Part 3: Setting Up Your New Home(page) in the New Web
- Part 4: What is Folksonomy - Why & How to Tag

IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Ericka Menchen Trevino, “Three Ways to View Social Bookmarking Systems”, http://blog.erickamenchen.net/2005/11/15/three-ways-to-view-social-
bookmarking-systems/, viewed on 5/21/07
2. Rakesh, “Getting out of hand,” http://godproposes.blogspot.com/search/label/Internet, viewed 5/21/07
3. Rashmi Sinha “A Social Analysis of Tagging,” http://www.rashmisinha.com/archives/06_01/social%20tagging.html viewed 5/25/07

DESCRIPTION:
This site is a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us with voting features like digg for educators - K-12 Teachers, Administrators, Professors, Grad Students, and Librarians - sponsored by a Harvard grant and using the open-source project Scuttle,

WEBSITE:
http://edtags.org

TAGS & CATEGORIES:
bookmarking, tagging, folksonomy, social media, education, networking

SCREENSHOTS:

PROS:
*It’s a social bookmarking specifically for educators to network and colloborate
*Has all major del.icio.us features plus digg voting!
*You can import/export bookmarks from your favorites or del.icio.us
*Has RSS subscriptions, so others can subscribe to your links and research.
*Can upload documents and videos

CONS:
*Still very new, not a lot of users yet.

COST/SET UP:
*free, just need to sign up for an account
*web-based no downloads required
*Has a bookmarklet you can drag to your browser toolbar for a button to add links to your account quickly and easily

EDUCATIONAL USEFULNESS:

“READ/WRITE SOCIAL WEB2.0″-NESS

OVERALL GRADE:
B+
Still to early

A Teacher’s Tour Guide into the New Read/Write Web2.0 - 10 Part Series

OBJECTIVE: Define folksonomy and get you started with tagging

Schools need to stop teaching the Dewey Decimal System and start empowering our students with folksonomy. After RSS and subscribing, folksonomy and tagging is the next essential philosophy and skill one must adopt in order to adapt and survive in “New Read/Write Web2.0″. The folksonomy revolution is pushing this current “Social Web2.0″ into the “Semantic Web3.0.” This new classifying phenomenon has reformed the way users organize, share, search, and label their digital pictures ( flickr), bookmarks (delicious), and videos (youtube) collections.

WHAT

Folksonomy, folk + taxonomy, is a new way to organize and label information using tags. Tags are keywords that give meta data, data about the data, which enable classification. Furthermore, folksonomies are social and collaborative because they use “cooperative classification and communication” that builds a collective intelligence for users to contribute and tap into. A better way to define folksonomy is to explain what is not.
*Non-binary: With folksonomy, you can apply multiple tags to data rather than choosing just one category to file under.
*Non-hierarchical: Instead of top down folders and sub folders, tags are organized in tag clouds where the more popular a tag the bigger the size. The following picture is an example tag cloud surrounding the concept of Web2.0.

WHY

Four reasons why you need to start tagging:

1. Tagging is easier than categorizing. Rashmi Sinha’s post “A Cognitive Analysis of Tagging provides two brilliant diagrams that represent the frustration behind the paralysis by analysis effect when we tried to find the “right” or “best” category to file. Then she illustrates the tagging process which shows you how it cuts off the last step making it easier and more enjoyable to label.

2. Tagging makes it easier to remember and find. Since you can apply multiple tags, you can sort, search, and file under multiple contexts.

3. Folksonomy allows you to tap into the wisdom of the crowds and jump on the long tail of the collective intelligence and emerging trends. Exploring and browsing through tag clouds allows you to discover trends and interests that you may otherwise never have been able to think of to type in google or stumble on.

4. Folksonomy is social and leads to sharing. You have the ability to find like-minded individuals and tap their brains, tastes, interests, and favorite sites.

HOW

Although their is no set standard and controlled vocabulary here are some general guidelines to get you tag clouds started on the right foot.

1) Use keywords.

2) Use multiple tags.

3) If you are going to use multiple words with in one tag use an underscore. Example “professional_development”

4) Be conscious of nouns and verbs when tagging. If I find links that are resources about how to blog, I will tag it them under “blogging.” If I find some interesting blogs I tag them with “blogs.”

DISCUSSION:

1) Do you think we as educators should take a role in setting up standards for some sort of common lingo with tags?

2) What tags do you use to organize and label your educational digital links and videos?

RELATED POSTS

- Part 1: Visual Definitions of Web2.0
- Part 2: What is RSS: How and Why to Subscribe
- Part 3: Setting Up Your New Home(page) in the New Web

REFERENCES
1. “Folksonomy.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy Viewed 4/20/07
2. “Wisdom of the crowds” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowds Viewed 4/20/07
3. “Long Tail” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail Viewed 4/20/07

IMAGE CREDITS
1. “Web2.0 Tag cloud” Markus Angermeier http://elearning.surf.nl/docs/e-learning/bierens_web20.jpg Viewed 4/20/07
2. “Cognitive Process Behind Caterogization” Rashmi Sinha. http://www.rashmisinha.com/archives/05_09/tagging-cognitive.html Viewed 4/20/07
3. “Cognitive Process Behind Tagging” Rashmi Sinha. http://www.rashmisinha.com/archives/05_09/tagging-cognitive.html Viewed 4/20/07