Week+8

=Week 8 - Social Bookmarking, Tagging and Technorati (2 activities) = = = February 22 - 25 = Activity 16 - Social Bookmarking and Tagging= media type="youtube" key="MpIOClX1jPE" height="405" width="660" Tagging is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content (webpages, pictures & posts). Unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines (i.e. Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want.

In the past few weeks, we’ve already explored a site –  Flickr --that allow users to take advantage of tagging This week, we want to also take at popular social bookmarking site called [|Diigo].

Diigo is a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize your bookmarks.

Many users find that the real power of Diigo is in the social network aspect, which allows you to see how other users have tagged similar links and also discover other websites that may be of interest to you. You can think of it as peering into another users’ filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool each user's filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at Diigo and learn about this popular bookmarking tool.

=** Discovery Resources: **=
 * A great [|Diigo Tutorial] (5 min video)
 * To get a Diigo bookmark on your toolbar, download Google Chrome (if you haven’t already), go to the Diigo site and then watch this video on [|how to use this extension].
 * How to use Diigo in the Classroom (In response to dislikes in the video clip: In PSD students can download GoogleChrome on their computer and insert the Diigo bookmark.)
 * [|Social Bookmarking in the Classroom]

Here's the DIIGO group for this very 23 Things Project site - if you are not already a member, please join and add more to it! =**Discovery Exercise:**= Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere?
 * 1) View the Diigo tutorial to get a good overview of its features.
 * 2) Take a look around Diigo. Do a search for specific tags. Check out [|my Diigo account] for an example.
 * 3) Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by a lot of other users. Can you see the comments they added about this bookmark or the tags that they used to categorize this reference?
 * 4) Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool.

Check our very own DIIGO bookmark for this project - media type="custom" key="7375887"

= Activity 17 - Technorati=

So now that you’ve been blogging for awhile, you might be wondering just how big is the blogosphere? Well according to San Francisco based Technorati, the leading search tool and authority for blogs, there are “over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day." Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.” Technorati currently tracks 62.5 million blogs. If the blogging trend continues, it is estimated that Technorati will have tracked its 100 millionth blog in just 5 months.

Yes, these numbers are astounding, but as you’ve already seen for yourselves, blogging is so easy that these publishing tools are being taken advantage of by almost every industry, including schools.

So how do you get your blog listed as part of the blogosphere and how can you tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search? To join the party and have your blog officially listed on Technorati and also take advantage of the watchlist and other features, you’ll need to claim your blog yourself.

There are a lot of features in Technorati including the capability to search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, limit a search by language, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like science or leadership).

=** Discovery Resources: **= Technorati Guide - A Guide To Everything Technorati Technorati Top 100 Blogs An example Tag Search using the Tag " Education " (This shows how you can search what tags people are using on their blog posts.)

=**Discovery Exercise:**= 1. Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for a tag that interests you in Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different? 2. Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results? 3. Create a blog post about your discoveries on this site. 4. Now that we’ve worked with tags in Flickr, Diigo, and Technorati, what are your thoughts about tagging? What are its advantages? What are its disadvantages?