Blogs, Tags and More: Making Sense (and Use) of New Internet Technologies
Tagging - what is it and why use it
Tags are categories you assign to web pages to enable you (and others with whom you share your tag page) to quickly find those web pages. You can assign more than one tag to a given page, and with social bookmarking services, you can find out what others are tagging, and what tags they use.
Our del.icio.us account name will be 'trldplayground' and our password will be 'learning'
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Under construction - please be patient!
 What is Tagging?
Tagging involves using a piece of software, an online service or a browser add-on to assign categories to web pages you want to bookmark for yourself or others.
Most tagging services require that you sign up for an account (often free), using an e-mail address and password. Some services charge a fee for "premium" offerings, such as access to special features or an ad-free environment.
Tagging and bookmarking services are usually hosted on a server separate from your computer. Usually, all the tools you need to view, sort, add to, or update your tags are available from within your personalized bookmark page itself. Some add-ons can allow you to 'sync' your tags with the bookmarks stored on your hard drive.
Most bookmarking and tagging services allow you to choose which tags and bookmarks are public and which are private.
Many tagging services are also capable of providing an RSS feed, or the code needed to embed a tag cloud or set of links within another web site or blog.
Explore Education-Oriented Tags - In education, teachers use bookmark tags to organize and share bookmark collections by category. Since the bookmarks and tags are hosted on a server, they are accessible to you and your students from any computer with a browser and an internet connection.
Here is my own set of tags. Plus, you can go to any of the tagging services and search for words you are interested in
Is Tagging is right for you?
Compare tagging to using bookmarks withing standard web browser or maintaining a set of links on a web page, a blog, or wiki. Tags are updated and organized automatically, but you may have less control over formatting. In order for the links to appear within your own blog or web page, you need to be comfortable with copying, pasting, and occasionally editing html code.
To use or edit a social bookmark or tag, you must have a live internet connection and a web browser.
Social bookmarks don't have to be shared, but you can. You can use social bookmarking services to share your links with others, to see what others are bookmarking, and more.
Find Out About Tagging Services - To start a wiki, you need to sign up for a wiki service. Some services are aimed especially at educators and offer premium features for free. Other wiki services are free because they generate revenue for the provider through advertising.
- Del.icio.us - A free and well-known social bookmarking service allows you to create both public and private bookmarks and assign them to your own categories ('tags'). http://del.icio.us/
- BlinkList - Like Del.icio.us, BlinkList provides quick web-based bookmarks with categories, and it can include small "snapshots" of the sites you tag so you can tell at a glance what the web site is www.blinklist.com
- Furl - Also free, Furl has fewer users but more options than del.icio.us www.furl.net
- www.flickr.com – upload & tag your photos
- www.librarything.com – tools & tags to track & share your favorite books!
Start Tagging - Use one of the services above.
- Sign up for a bookmarking service
- Start a list of tags you think you'd like to use. You can make them on the fly, but it's better to begin with some categories you think you'll use, and then to use them consistently, rather than creating lots of new tags (e.g. web sites that you might tag "blog" or "blogs" or "blogging" could all be simply tagged "blog", and your tags will be easier to use.
- Bookmark your tagging page in your own web browser so it will be easier to get to. Likewise, if you can, add the link to the web page(s) used by your students and colleagues.
Enhance Your Tagging Experience - There are several ways to make it easier to tag and to use your tags more easily.
- Add a tagging toolbar to your browser -
- Experiment with Tag Clouds - explore the settings/options to see if your tagging service offers a tag cloud
- Organize your tag categories -
- Embed your tags into your web page, blog or wiki - explore the settings/options to see if your tagging service gives you the code you need to paste into your web site or blog.
- Edit your bookmark entries so they make sense and are consistent
- Automatically add your tagged pages as entries in your blog
Go back to Blogging
Go on to Wikis
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