As many of us know, del.icio.us is a fantastic resource which includes a huge number of links and resources that can be used in education. However, given the size and scope of del.icio.us, it is sometimes more difficult to discover educational resources mixed in with everything else. For example, the tag "games" could be used to define much more than educational links.
As a result, we have developed edutagger, a social bookmarking service for learners and educators. The overall aim of edutagger is to provide a means for learners and educators to share links and resources in an open and dynamic form, and can be found at www.edutagger.com. It is possible to import your browser bookmarks/favourites, and even transfer your del.icio.us links.
edutagger, of course, is based on open source technology, and is currently (at the date of this post), in beta. However, it is fully functional and very simple to use. We'd love to hear any comments or feedback you may have.
P.S. Forgive me if I should not be posting this here, please delete this post if it is innapropriate. I couldn't find anything that indicated any issues with this kind of post based on past threads.
edutagger.com - social bookmarking for learners and educators
by Mark Schumann -
Number of replies: 7
In reply to Mark Schumann
Re: edutagger.com - social bookmarking for learners and educators
by Frances Bell -
I can't see any problem with you introducing us to this new service. But I am curious Mark - what does this bring over tagging a resource with games and education , etc.? How will you promote 'good' tagging behaviours? (and please tell me about them).
Any, good luck with the new venture.
In reply to Frances Bell
Re: edutagger.com - social bookmarking for learners and educators
by Mark Schumann -
Thanks for your reply Frances. I think your two questions are linked to a degree, as edutagger's focus on education facilitates a less specific and more intuitive tagging process.
For example, let's say we bookmark Second Life on del.icio.us, and use the tags "games", "education" and "games and education". The tag "games" is obviously going to bring up a huge amount of inappropriate links, and "education" is again too broad when you consider our specific needs. "games and education" is better, but we have two main problems - firstly, the average user isn't going to think about tagging their links this way. To them, "games" and "education" tags are good enough. Secondly, the phrase can be expressed in a variety of ways (e.g. "games and/in/for education" or "educational games", etc). The complexity builds much more given the scope of del.icio.us.
Through the use of edutagger, on the other hand, the educational focus is implied, so it is only necessary, in this case, to use the tag "games". Therefore, it's much clearer and more intuitive for the user, and we'll end up with less discrepancies between tags.
Promotion of good tagging behaviours in general is difficult, and can be a problem in all social bookmarking services by their very nature. However, the issue becomes less problematic when the scope of the service is tightened. There are also a couple of other options which we'll explore down the track:
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
For example, let's say we bookmark Second Life on del.icio.us, and use the tags "games", "education" and "games and education". The tag "games" is obviously going to bring up a huge amount of inappropriate links, and "education" is again too broad when you consider our specific needs. "games and education" is better, but we have two main problems - firstly, the average user isn't going to think about tagging their links this way. To them, "games" and "education" tags are good enough. Secondly, the phrase can be expressed in a variety of ways (e.g. "games and/in/for education" or "educational games", etc). The complexity builds much more given the scope of del.icio.us.
Through the use of edutagger, on the other hand, the educational focus is implied, so it is only necessary, in this case, to use the tag "games". Therefore, it's much clearer and more intuitive for the user, and we'll end up with less discrepancies between tags.
Promotion of good tagging behaviours in general is difficult, and can be a problem in all social bookmarking services by their very nature. However, the issue becomes less problematic when the scope of the service is tightened. There are also a couple of other options which we'll explore down the track:
- Use of tag groups - we may look at some way of grouping tags together (e.g. games, game and gaming would be linked to another group which could be explored whilst keeping the original tags in place). This would be a more manual process but easy to update.
- edutagger users who bookmark specific resources related to an area of expertise - we could create an edutagger_games account that bookmarks appropriate sites. As it is possible to not only subscribe to tags, but also users (through the use of watchlists), end users will have the capacity to benefit from users (and those maintained by edutagger) who choose to focus on specific areas.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
In reply to Frances Bell
Re: edutagger.com - social bookmarking for learners and educators
by Mark Schumann -
I've given some more thought to the idea of promoting good tagging behaviours, and I began to ask myself whether a social bookmarking service for "learners and educators" was too broad (using del.icio.us as an example). As a result, edutagger.com is now targetted towards K-12 learners and educators, as I believe this will allow for better quality and more appropriate links.
To continue, I've included a "subject-specific" group of tags that will be available each time someone submits a new bookmark. This is to promote more appropriate tagging, whilst maintaining the capabilities of user-generated tags. See the image attachment to see what I mean. I'd be interested to hear any thoughts on this.
Finally, edutagger is now out of beta, i'd love to get a few more edutaggers registered
To continue, I've included a "subject-specific" group of tags that will be available each time someone submits a new bookmark. This is to promote more appropriate tagging, whilst maintaining the capabilities of user-generated tags. See the image attachment to see what I mean. I'd be interested to hear any thoughts on this.
Finally, edutagger is now out of beta, i'd love to get a few more edutaggers registered
In reply to Mark Schumann
Re: edutagger.com - social bookmarking for learners and educators
by A. T. Wyatt -
I registered, because this sounds very interesting.
You do not have a way to report problems on the site that I could see. When attempting to edit the profile, I got an error message, but could find no way to report it. I realize that you probably don't want to encourage spam, but people with legitimate errors should have a way to reach the developers!
Thanks,
atw
You do not have a way to report problems on the site that I could see. When attempting to edit the profile, I got an error message, but could find no way to report it. I realize that you probably don't want to encourage spam, but people with legitimate errors should have a way to reach the developers!
Thanks,
atw
In reply to A. T. Wyatt
Re: edutagger.com - social bookmarking for learners and educators
by Mark Schumann -
Thanks for the report atw. I've discovered the issue and it should now be working correctly.
There is a contact form under the "about" page, but perhaps that is not as clear as it should be so i'll investigate a better solution for feedback.
There is a contact form under the "about" page, but perhaps that is not as clear as it should be so i'll investigate a better solution for feedback.
In reply to Mark Schumann
Re: edutagger.com - social bookmarking for learners and educators
by Mark Schumann -
Some of you may have used edutagger late last year with success, but there were a number of spamming attacks that degraded the quality of content. Unfortunately it has been difficult to clean much of this up due to a lack of appropriate administrative tools.
As a result, i've migrated edutagger to a new system (again based on open source software) that is much easier to manage. The new system only promotes a link/bookmark to the front page if it has received enough "tags", and allows users to "bury" links that are irrelevant to K-12 education. If anyone is familiar with Digg, it's a similar concept.I'd invite you to take another look if you ever accessed the old site after a spam attack and were turned off.
Again, any comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated.
In reply to Mark Schumann
Re: edutagger.com - social bookmarking for learners and educators
by arnold russell -
For users, edutagger can be useful as a way to access a consolidated set of bookmarks from various computers, organize large numbers of bookmarks, and share bookmarks with contacts. Libraries have found social bookmarking to be useful as an easy way to provide lists of informative links to patrons.
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Arnold
Social Bookmarking
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Arnold
Social Bookmarking