As the 'unofficial' news broke on Twitter and subsequently TechCrunch, social learners today discovered that Delicious might be going dark. Whether or not the story becomes mirrored in reality, there are a few lessons educators can take from the news.
Lesson #1 The Education Community is Resilient Alec Couros has inspired the creation of Alternatives to Delicious, a Google Document that has been edited by at least 40 collaborators.
It will be a challenge to recreate the link-sharing network I've grown to love at Delicious, but whether it happens tomorrow; next year; or five years from now; there will one day be a need to relocate my links. In this case, it's a straightforward process to migrate bookmarks to Diigo, or another service.
Lesson #2 Free is Not Forever
We learned last spring, when Ning began to charge for what was formerly a free social network service, that it takes money, and real people to provide the services we often take for granted. In the case of Delicious, it now appears that the parent company, Yahoo, will be cutting the virtual service, in order to deal with financial realities.
Lesson #3 You Need a Backup Plan It may not seem important when your digital life is firing on all cylinders, but users of cloud services (especially free services) should think about what they'll do if the unthinkable happens. Flickr is also managed by Yahoo; might it be jettisoned next? Could Twitter or Facebook one day be seen as financially unviable? Might Google decide one day, that Gmail or Google Docs makes more sense as a monthly subscription service?
Whatever you do in response to the possible demise of Delicious, it's always a good time to think about what you're doing to protect your ideas; your data; and your memories.
As the 'unofficial' news broke on Twitter and subsequently TechCrunch, social learners today discovered that Delicious might be going dark. Whether or not the story becomes mirrored in reality, there are a few lessons educators can take from the news.
Lesson #1 The Education Community is Resilient Alec Couros has inspired the creation of Alternatives to Delicious, a Google Document that has been edited by at least 40 collaborators.
It will be a challenge to recreate the link-sharing network I've grown to love at Delicious, but whether it happens tomorrow; next year; or five years from now; there will one day be a need to relocate my links. In this case, it's a straightforward process to migrate bookmarks to Diigo, or another service.
Lesson #2 Free is Not Forever
We learned last spring, when Ning began to charge for what was formerly a free social network service, that it takes money, and real people to provide the services we often take for granted. In the case of Delicious, it now appears that the parent company, Yahoo, will be cutting the virtual service, in order to deal with financial realities.
Lesson #3 You Need a Backup Plan It may not seem important when your digital life is firing on all cylinders, but users of cloud services (especially free services) should think about what they'll do if the unthinkable happens. Flickr is also managed by Yahoo; might it be jettisoned next? Could Twitter or Facebook one day be seen as financially unviable? Might Google decide one day, that Gmail or Google Docs makes more sense as a monthly subscription service?
Whatever you do in response to the possible demise of Delicious, it's always a good time to think about what you're doing to protect your ideas; your data; and your memories.
One of the things we've been trying to get our heads around on Twitter for Teachers, is how educators can find others with similar portfolios. In discussion with Ed Webb on a feed called "Do we want to list 'Teachers on Twitter'?" we happened upon a unique solution that engages teachers in 'tagging themselves'.
Our strategy leverages Twitter, Delicious, and Google Reader (or any other RSS reader). If you know these tools, the explanation below may well set you on your way towards subscribing to a wide variety of TwitterTeachers!
One of the things we've been trying to get our heads around on Twitter for Teachers, is how educators can find others with similar portfolios. In discussion with Ed Webb on a feed called "Do we want to list 'Teachers on Twitter'?" we happened upon a unique solution that engages teachers in 'tagging themselves'.
Our strategy leverages Twitter, Delicious, and Google Reader (or any other RSS reader). If you know these tools, the explanation below may well set you on your way towards subscribing to a wide variety of TwitterTeachers!
Social bookmarking favourite Del.icio.us is finally getting strong competition from Diigo, as the edu-blogosphere turns its attention to the 'newer' kid on the block.
Diigo is great for highlighting content on pages and for creating and sharing 'notes' on a given web page. For research, or collaborative information gathering and annotation, the highlight features are promising. The fact that you can search for notes recorded by others, and that you can share 'highlights' may take collaborative learning to a new level; but in reflecting on my 'hardcover' past, I've found that the one with the highlighter often brightens information that I'd rather skim past!
I suspect that librarians would be eager to share Diigo to students, if for no other reason than to teach the effective annotation of web resources. Educators looking to combat plagiarism might even call for students to share their web research by requiring the tagging, highlighting and annotating of sources with this tool. Advanced users will make use of the embedded 'webslide' tool, to include their research in automated slideshows.
It remains to be seen whether or not Diigo will make advances on the traction its gained of late, but this beta tool is so feature-rich that many educators are sure to become active 'diigers'. The fact that the site embeds a number of social networking tools (i.e., comment wall; friends' activities; groups...) will likely work against this tool's use within elementary and secondary schools, as filters work overtime to block such interactivity. Will scholarly university students move to this space to avoid the distractions running amock in Facebook?
For links that you want to find and share easily, Delicious is the most accessible and efficient tool: bookmarking with tags takes only a moment, and the interface is uncomplicated. For higher-level thinking and public reflection about web content including the sharing of more complete meta-information - Diigo may well be the ticket!
The genesis of this topic is explained on today's Teacher 2.0 Podcast... 9 minutes of inspiration.
Social bookmarking favourite Del.icio.us is finally getting strong competition from Diigo, as the edu-blogosphere turns its attention to the 'newer' kid on the block.
Diigo is great for highlighting content on pages and for creating and sharing 'notes' on a given web page. For research, or collaborative information gathering and annotation, the highlight features are promising. The fact that you can search for notes recorded by others, and that you can share 'highlights' may take collaborative learning to a new level; but in reflecting on my 'hardcover' past, I've found that the one with the highlighter often brightens information that I'd rather skim past!
I suspect that librarians would be eager to share Diigo to students, if for no other reason than to teach the effective annotation of web resources. Educators looking to combat plagiarism might even call for students to share their web research by requiring the tagging, highlighting and annotating of sources with this tool. Advanced users will make use of the embedded 'webslide' tool, to include their research in automated slideshows.
It remains to be seen whether or not Diigo will make advances on the traction its gained of late, but this beta tool is so feature-rich that many educators are sure to become active 'diigers'. The fact that the site embeds a number of social networking tools (i.e., comment wall; friends' activities; groups...) will likely work against this tool's use within elementary and secondary schools, as filters work overtime to block such interactivity. Will scholarly university students move to this space to avoid the distractions running amock in Facebook?
For links that you want to find and share easily, Delicious is the most accessible and efficient tool: bookmarking with tags takes only a moment, and the interface is uncomplicated. For higher-level thinking and public reflection about web content including the sharing of more complete meta-information - Diigo may well be the ticket!
The genesis of this topic is explained on today's Teacher 2.0 Podcast... 9 minutes of inspiration.
"So, What is this 'social bookmarking' thing all about anyways?"
This quote is attributed to my youngest brother: a worldly-wize techno-whiz who has published in many formats, but who has yet to understand the power of bookmarking when paired with RSS subscriptions. If I can teach him about social bookmarking, then it stands to reason that there are many, many people (including the majority of educators?!) who have yet to discover the value of sites such as http://del.icio.us/
I sense a lesson coming on (with thanks to Common Craft)...
Social bookmarking is a practical educational tool that can be leveraged in a number of ways. So let me give you just a few reasons why you should be tagging sites:
1] Putting all of your bookmarks online and tagging them with keywords makes your favourites searchable.
2] You can access your bookmarks from any computer, using any browser... not just the one you have your 'favourites' on.
3] You can assess the popularity of any link you've bookmarked by taking note of the number of times a site has been saved by other del.icio.us users.
4] Your bookmarks are shareable by one simple URL. Friends, colleagues and students can visit your bookmarks by following a simple link. For example, my bookmarks are all online at http://del.icio.us/thecleversheep
5] Friends can choose to access only bookmarks tagged with specific keywords either by searching them, or by visiting sites by taglist like 'Web2.0' or 'photos'. Now that I think about it, that would be a good way to gather links for tagging on your own account. http://del.icio.us/thecleversheep/web2.0 http://del.icio.us/thecleversheep/photos
6] People can 'subscribe' to your bookmarks. By copying the RSS feed for a particular page within any users delicious bookmarks, you will be notified directly, any time a suitably tagged bookmark is added by that person. For example, if you want to be notified anytime Rodd Lucier finds a terrific video resource, you can copy the url: http://del.icio.us/thecleversheep/video into your RSS reader (Google Reader or Bloglines or Technorati...).
7] Teachers can invent unique tags for each of their classes using the subject or course code as a tag. Students could then access any site deemed worthy... anyplace, anytime! Tags for a grade 11 science course might be found in a place like this: http://del.icio.us/mrteacher/sci3u. Better yet, if a teacher shares a really unique tagging code like 'luciersci3u' then students could add bookmarks to their own del.icio.us accounts, and since you can search bookmarks by any and all users at once in the root of del.icio.us, students would be able to conveniently access the bookmarks made by any and all members of the class.
8] If some of these strategies are taught to students, either by example or by formally leading students to tag their own favourite websites, it won't take long for students to realize the potential of link-sharing. I can see students inventing tags like 'ancientegypt'or 'electionproject' in order to leverage the power of del.icio.us along with their peers.
Do you know of other practical applications? If so, feel free to add a comment. Maybe someone will bookmark this post on del.icio.us and we'll all be able to search this list of bookmark ideas amongst other 'cleversheep' tags! For more on this topic, check out the Podcast feed: "Teacher 2.0".
"So, What is this 'social bookmarking' thing all about anyways?"
This quote is attributed to my youngest brother: a worldly-wize techno-whiz who has published in many formats, but who has yet to understand the power of bookmarking when paired with RSS subscriptions. If I can teach him about social bookmarking, then it stands to reason that there are many, many people (including the majority of educators?!) who have yet to discover the value of sites such as http://del.icio.us/
I sense a lesson coming on (with thanks to Common Craft)...
Social bookmarking is a practical educational tool that can be leveraged in a number of ways. So let me give you just a few reasons why you should be tagging sites:
1] Putting all of your bookmarks online and tagging them with keywords makes your favourites searchable.
2] You can access your bookmarks from any computer, using any browser... not just the one you have your 'favourites' on.
3] You can assess the popularity of any link you've bookmarked by taking note of the number of times a site has been saved by other del.icio.us users.
4] Your bookmarks are shareable by one simple URL. Friends, colleagues and students can visit your bookmarks by following a simple link. For example, my bookmarks are all online at http://del.icio.us/thecleversheep
5] Friends can choose to access only bookmarks tagged with specific keywords either by searching them, or by visiting sites by taglist like 'Web2.0' or 'photos'. Now that I think about it, that would be a good way to gather links for tagging on your own account. http://del.icio.us/thecleversheep/web2.0 http://del.icio.us/thecleversheep/photos
6] People can 'subscribe' to your bookmarks. By copying the RSS feed for a particular page within any users delicious bookmarks, you will be notified directly, any time a suitably tagged bookmark is added by that person. For example, if you want to be notified anytime Rodd Lucier finds a terrific video resource, you can copy the url: http://del.icio.us/thecleversheep/video into your RSS reader (Google Reader or Bloglines or Technorati...).
7] Teachers can invent unique tags for each of their classes using the subject or course code as a tag. Students could then access any site deemed worthy... anyplace, anytime! Tags for a grade 11 science course might be found in a place like this: http://del.icio.us/mrteacher/sci3u. Better yet, if a teacher shares a really unique tagging code like 'luciersci3u' then students could add bookmarks to their own del.icio.us accounts, and since you can search bookmarks by any and all users at once in the root of del.icio.us, students would be able to conveniently access the bookmarks made by any and all members of the class.
8] If some of these strategies are taught to students, either by example or by formally leading students to tag their own favourite websites, it won't take long for students to realize the potential of link-sharing. I can see students inventing tags like 'ancientegypt'or 'electionproject' in order to leverage the power of del.icio.us along with their peers.
Do you know of other practical applications? If so, feel free to add a comment. Maybe someone will bookmark this post on del.icio.us and we'll all be able to search this list of bookmark ideas amongst other 'cleversheep' tags! For more on this topic, check out the Podcast feed: "Teacher 2.0".
