Tags and Social Bookmarking

The cloud (on-line workspaces/storage) is amazing.  It used to be if you wanted to keep something, you put it in a file that had one title/heading and you needed to remember where you put it.  If it was something you had more than one use for you may have made a copy and put it in another file somewhere else.  This was true of paper copies in metal filing cabinets and word processing documents.
Online you save stuff using TAGS.  You can give one thing as many different tags as you want so that you can find it again.  So, for example if I found an article on Gladiators that I used for Adventures in World History and I might want to use it for the Ancient Civ course, I can tag it with CHM4E, CHW3M, gladiators, history.  I could later search for it using any one of those tags.
So, “where would one use these tags?” you ask.  Social bookmarking is one place.
Social bookmarking is pretty incredible whether you use it for social/sharing purposes or not.  I’ll start with not, because I think that’s the way most in our department would use it.  
If you are working on your computer at home and you see a website you like, you can bookmark it in Internet Explorer (or Firefox, or Chrome, or Safari...) so you can get back to it later.  But it is only available on that computer, unless you also email it to yourself so you can bookmark it at school (on your network login), but it is still only available in those two places, and only if you are signed in at school.  It is also only part of a long list (that you may have started organizing into folders if you are really on top of things).
If you use a social bookmarking tool (diigo, delicious, google) you have access to your bookmarks on any computer that is connected to the internet.  And rather than one long list to scroll through, you can sort through your bookmarks by using the tags you create.  I have found this quite useful.  It is a great way to save things for later as well.  The tag concept is key here - you should be consistent with the tags you use and think about how you will want to search for the website/article/blog next time.  (Example; I am trying to change my tags ipad, iPad, iPads to something consistent now and it is a little bit of a pain.)

How to use this in class:
Because these are social bookmarking tools, you can share your bookmarks with whomever you want.  
My delicious account is:  http://www.delicious.com/LisaUnger711/ You can go here and see what I’ve saved and what tags I’ve used.  You can click on the links and use my bookmarks if they are of use to you.  You could set up an account and share your link with your class, telling them which tags are of most use to them.  You can also make somethings in your list private so they won’t be shared with whomever has the link.  Example: I have the maplewood site saved for myself, but I don’t think you see that if you go in.  You can also use delicious (or diigo) as a search engine.  Type in a tag, see what others have saved using that tag.  It also gives you the popularity of that site/article - how many others have tagged it.
My diigo account is:   http://www.diigo.com/user/lunger711  It works much the same way but is a little more sophisticated.  You can create groups in diigo and other people with a diigo account can add to a group page.  So you could create a CGW4U group and have students with a diigo account also add useful websites or articles to the group (class) page.

Evernote

There was a request that I write about Evernote.  For those of you that don't know, Evernote is a cross platform app/program/website that allows you to save anything (all types of files, websites, images) in one place so you can access them anywhere - there are smart phone apps as well as a website.  You can organize your stuff by folders and tags so you can find what you want again.

I've been trying to write about it for a while, but haven't figured out what to say.  I use it, but not to its full potential, so I've been having trouble figuring out what to say.  Then I ran across this blog that does a MUCH better job than I could, so here's the link:  evernote for education blog

If you would like me to add the evernote app to the iPads so you can encourage students to use it, just let me know.

There are a couple other non-iPad things I'd like to share.  If there is something iPad related apps that you'd like me write about just let me know.  Otherwise, the next topic will be social bookmarking. (Coming soon!)