Excursion 7- Bookmarking/Tagging

Excursion #7: Bookmarking and tagging!
Tour Guide yells: No, don’t mark your book… you will be charged. Library Police will get you. And no, no tag is the school… You should know that by now…
Bookmarking is simply a means of identifying that you like this page or recipe or restaurant. We all have done it. Order a travel guide. Read it. Wow, there is an interesting pub (not more drinking, Tour Guide???). There is a site we have to see. There is…. So what do you do??? Turn down the page so that you can quickly go back to that page. Bookmarking is simply this process.
Bookmarking works with books. Now we go to that dreaded Internet and search for hotels in Thailand. We find fifty that we would like to go back to. What do you do? Be honest… Print off each page and store them in a binder??? Write out the URL (oh a fancy word that simply means the website address)? Or how about right clicking and selecting Add to favorites. This is bookmarking….
OK so far? This works when I only have one computer. On my computer, I can go to the Internet and display my favourites. However, I do not plan on lugging my desktop computer around Thailand with me…I also do not want to print out the pages….Wouldn’t it be nice if I could access my favourites from any computer… Nice thinking Tour Guide….diigo offers you this chance. It is a website where you can store your favourites and then access them from anywhere. You create an account. You can create your own favourites list. Store them. Then, from any other computer in the world, you can sign into your account and find your favourites. And don’t think that you are the only searching for hotels in Thailand. Diigo allows you to search for other websites that fellow delicious users have marked. Let others do your work for you – nothing wrong with that!
But Tour Guide, you also talked of tags???? What about tags???
When you "tag" something online, you assign a word or a short sentence describing the content of that website, picture, blog post, etc. However, unlike library cataloging which follows a strict set of guidelines (the Library of Congress, which can be dull, fussy, and rather formal), tagging is completely unstructured and thus infinitely more fun! Users create connections between online materials any way they want, making the entire process more personal. For example, a tag for me may be ‘chocoholic’ ‘scatty’ or even (heaven forbid) ‘annoying’. So, you add this tag to my picture and then if you want to find all of the other people who are ‘annoying’ simply search and find us all. And we are proud to be Annoying…
Blogger and YouTube, which we've already discussed. Facebook, Flickr, and Shelfari also use tags. Hold it Tour Guide – Shelfari… Yes, Shelfari. It is a website where users can search for books on common themes and then share likes and dislikes and any other information on books. ‘What is the best tour guide to Thailand?’ A bookstore will tell you they all are and to be effective you must purchase all 1756 in their store… But people such as you are not afraid to call crap crap… Shelfari allows you to do so. First, you can search for all of the tour guides on Thailand. This is using the tagging. Next, add your comments. The social networking side. All in one nice package.
Within a blog, for example, you can add tags to a post you've written. The tags for this post could be 'tagging' ,‘bookmarking’ , ‘Shelfari’ , ‘delicious’ or ‘irrating’ or ‘pain the the a**&’ – whatever best describes your experience. You are – are you ready for this??? -- classifying. The last thing that you probably thought you would ever do when you signed up for the course. Next step is to be a real librarian…. So search for other items with the same tag and you suddenly have entered the world of Social Networking (did you collect your $200.00 as you passed GO?)
Okay, that's pretty neat. But what else can I do with these tags besides search out a new books or categorize my blog?
Your Task Your task this time…
Let’s start with simple tagging. Go to your blog. Click on New Post. Now, note the EDIT tab. Click on the EDIT tab. Go to edit one of your entries. Now, in the edit screen, note down on the bottom a box called ‘Labels”. This is where you tag the entry or blog. Give your entry a term or terms – make them relevant…. Now, save. Look at your blog. Wow, you tagged it and it did not even hurt.
To complete this assignment: 1. Go to Shelfari. Now we are all going to work on one shelf in Shelfari. Sign in to Shelfari. Contact your travel agents for the passwords. Once in Shelfari, under Profile, go to My shelf. Wow... some books are there..... Scroll over those books and you will see a pop up highlighting the book. WOW! 2. Now, in the search box at the top of the screen, type in where you would like to go. Or what you would like to see... or whatever you wish. Can't think of anything, try Thailand. All the books on Thailand will show. Browse through them until you find one of interest. Click on the Add button beneath the picture. Wow.. you added it to our shelf. Now follow the whole process and explore Shelfari. See how extensive you can get! Remember to add tags also. 3. Try to add at least three books. Note: copy the URL for your library, .. 4. Go to your blog. Sign in. Start a new post and tell the world all about Shelfari and the joy that you can have... for those who want to do something serious, think of how you could use this in your class... book reviews.... literature studies.....Now for Further excursion or the adventurous….
1. Visit Diigo, click Join Diigo, and create your own account. Don't forget that you can login also with your Google account! MUCH easier...
2. To start, look for Community in the top box. Then look for the Search box. Enter your term. This will then provide links to possible responses to your search term. Find one that is of use or is of interest (interest and use can differ quite a lot) Just before you launch your search, note that a whole pile of options will come down... make sure that you are searching the community. 3..Find your website. You can preview it in the box at the top of the screen. If it is useful, click on Save (top of the page) and you will add it to your own bookmarks called your library...
4. And that is all that you have to do. You can add more and more and more...
Now you can view your bookmarked web pages at any time by simply logging into your account from any computer on the Internet, anywhere in the world.
6. Finally, write a post on your blog and tell me: • What web sites you bookmarked? • What tags you added to your bookmarks? • Will you continue to use Diigo?
7. Click Publish Post.
Now go forth and find websites that tempt you, little ones!
Check out one this video on Youtube on Diigo in the classroom.