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January 7, 2008

Learning Del.icio.us

For my first day back, I'm cleaning out all of my notes from 2007! One of the things people have asked is for better instructions for using del.icio.us. I really got the hang of this and used is extensively in 2007. So, my first offering for 2008 is these two guides.

For those who prefer text instructions, How to: Del.icio.us Part 1 from Benibshop.me.uk. There is no part 2, but this is pretty complete for starting.

For video instructions, a simple tutorial from LBurch and posted at teachertube.com. This is 30 minutes long but it's easy to jump around and get just to the part you need instruction on.

Posted by Pat on 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 16, 2007

Magic Pictures

I've been preparing for a session on organizing digital media for use in classes.  One of the things I've been struggling with is how to convince teachers that it's worthwhile to tag any of their content.  It's really taken me almost a year to figure out the best way for me to use my del.icio.us account.  The power of that service is all in tagging. I've also used Flickr extensively for a by searching on various tags and organizing slideshows or collections with that tool.

This week I came across PhotoSynth by Microsoft, which aggregates photos to create a seamless whole picture.  This is still in beta, but it gives a good picture of how this is going to get continue to become more useful. Right now the demos are using photos taken by one individual or a small team (gotta make the demo look good). But the longer vision of this is to enable users to stitch together their photos based on tags. Or better yet, use the Flickr tags of numerous people to build these 3D views.

From where I sit, this looks like more of the world getting flat.  Last summer, when AOL released data on all their searches, it was disturbing to see how quickly the little one or two word phrases that we typed in can be aggregated to give a snapshot of our whole identity.  That's the dark side.  Finding a way to aggregate those little bits of data and create a larger common consciousness is much more powerful and exciting. We do that intentionally at Wikipedia and now we might begin to see it happen more automatically.

Posted by Pat on 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 9, 2007

Why do people post on the Web?

Here's something that caught my eye today -- Why Do People Contribute to Digg or Wikipedia? This is of particular interest after Time named You as the 2006 Person of the Year.

This really affects us on two levels. First, as we use this site for research or information, it's very useful and interesting to know about why people might post to these sites. Knowing what the motivation of the folks who contribute may help make more informed decisions about what to trust.

Second, knowing why people contribute may help in crafting assignments with "authentic audiences." Why will some students shine and others shy away from these? Are there strategies in creating those assignments that we should take into account?

I don't know the answers to either of these questions, but I do think it's important to think more about the questions than the answers and develop new questions every day.

Posted by Pat on 11:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 5, 2006

Bookmarks in Del.icio.us

I've been reading about the folksonomy and darting over to del.icio.us for more than a year now. I've tried shared bookmark spaces like ikeepbookmarks.com many times in the past, but this is something different. Using del.icio.us should enable me to take advantage of reorganizing using tagging and sharing the finds of people all over the world.

So, I've now really started my del.icio.us tagging in earnest and I've even added a tag cloud to my Resources page. Over time, I hope to replace all of the links that I've maintained over the years, but there is much still to be learned!

Posted by Pat on 2:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack