- A few years ago I was thrilled the first time I learned about social bookmarking websites. I had created databases of URLs for my students and teachers and had a couple hundred URLs in paper format. The problem was the URLs hadn't settled down yet so the URLs to my favorite resource sites kept changing. I surveyed the features of about 4 bookmarking websites and settled on LookSmart's FURL. I was so excited about having my bookmarks accessible via any computer in the world that I spent an entire weekend adding my research related bookmarks to my FURL. I was at the end of adding all 700+ of my bookmarks that I realized that my entries were monopolizing the front page of FURL. "Look at what our members are currently Furling....". Although, I was embarrassed it made me think about the social aspect of this online tool and what it had to offer in the way of social use.
- The social side of bookmarking is interesting. Looking at what is being bookmarked (other than my URLs) and you can ascertain social, business trends and current news.
- The advantage of social bookmarking websites is that they give students easy access to selected websites and if so designed can contain trusted/recommended websites for school projects. I have always found that if you give the students the websites they will use them, if you don't they consult Google. The other cool thing about bookmarking webtools is that the students themselves can also add websites to the list. Of course this requires constant monitoring but really gives students a greater participation in their own learning. I will have to explore using this tool in different ways @school.
- My MyPaperBag FURL choice was based on a lot of things but the ability to create searchable categories was important. Also the ability to download the records was also important to me. I recently downloaded my FURL bookmarks into a Google Custom Search Engine so the words on each of the webpages could be searched rather than just the bibliographic info. Probably if I was to start this again I would use Google Marker and Google Custom Search.
- Another VERY cool thing about FURL is that it caches the pages therefore I can still get to the websites if they go away. Really neat and isn't a Google Custom Search feature.
- Something changed about FURL recently and frankly I do not care for the new format so I am as I writing this blog entry considering how I will use this webtool in the future. I still add websites though not as often as I did in the past.
Commentary on Technorati....
- It is nice to know that there is an easy way to find blogs on specific subjects!! I wonder what happened to BlogWise? I went to look for it but it is gone. Technorati is definitely nicer.
- I have mixed emotions when I think of blogs and when exploring Technorati these same feelings arose again...
- I have a video I show when teaching website evaluation. In this very old "60 Minutes" segment, the subject is a man who earned a PHD from Harvard, who was publishing LOTS of misinformation on the Internet. When he was interviewed he was asked why he was publishing theories he had no proof of and he said..."the good thing about the Internet is that everyone can publish and the bad thing about the Internet is that everyone can publish...". He goes on to say that in a way he is competing with the NYTimes. I agree with him.
- Don't get me wrong I have probably learned just as much from blog entries in the last two years that I have learned from books....but I have also wasted so much time reading gossip, opinions, and useless information. With all the information out there and so very little time in our schedules to waste I am surprised that more people are not asking for easier ways to determine the worth of provided information. ....And once again popularity seems to be leading the way in determining what is considered "good" on the web. Technorati lists the most popular and authority websites (see below Technorati's definition of authority). Since when is Popularity a synonym for Authority? Many search engines like Google also rank results based on popularity. Seems like we seem to be subconsciously accepting that the most popular is the best. Our experience in HS tells us that this is far from the truth but everyone seems to be accepting this constant kind of ranking. We probably want others to do this for us because it is much too much work to evaluate the way that we know is the best. Counting the number of website visits is far too easy.
- I cherish the opportunity to be able to publish my information on the web but I do not know if my few entries warrant world wide attention especially if they are ramblings. My use of blogs has helped many especially in my school but I certainly wouldn't want those entries indexed in Technorati. What even scares me more is that there are some individuals out there trying to save EVERYTHING that is being added to the Internet. Seems to me that if we are developing a way for us to share our thoughts and opinions there should also be developed a way to see what qualifications or experience the writer has regarding the subject of the entry.
- Tagging!!!.....Wow....the rest of the world addressing the importance of keywords. Who would have ever thought???? Seems to me that the non librarian part of the world feels like they invented something new. Standardizing of category words..... Let them think whatever they want at least they are finally addressing the subject.
- I love the big word tag charts (Clouds) like the Technorati help page one below. Really cool visualization which provides and easy way to select keywords while seeing which are used the most.
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