3. Social Bookmarking in Plain English
http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english 3:22M
4. English text transcript for the video
Social Bookmarking in Plain English
Link:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/knowledge_management/social-bookmarking/social-boo
• It's just too much.
– Did you know that there are over 15 billion web
pages? To make sense of it all, we need to
pluck out the best pages and save them for
later.
• We have choices.
– We could bookmark or add to favorites in our
web browser. Nah, it quickly becomes messy.
Plus, these bookmarks are tied to only one
computer. This is the old way.
• There's a new way that doesn't use a
browser. It uses a website.
– This is called a social bookmarking site, and
the one we'll use today is called Delicious. It
makes bookmarking more useful and fun.
• We'll focus on three things:
– a) How to get started with bookmarking,
– b) How bookmarks are organized by tags, and
– c) Why this kind of bookmarking is social.
• First, go to delicious to sign up for a free
account.
– While you're signing up, you'll see an easy to add a
couple of buttons to your browser.
– These are important. The Tag button is how you'll
add new bookmarks to the website. On any
website, you can click Tag to save that site as a
delicious bookmark. Easy!
– Consider this example: you are a teacher who
often uses the web to find math lessons for 8th
graders. You're overwhelmed by all the sites.
There are just too many to remember. Using
delicious, remembering sites is as easy as tagging
them. Here's one. Oh nice, perfect.
• Here's what happens when you tag a site: a new
window opens and asks for more information.
– You can add keywords or tags that describe the
site. These will help you find bookmarks later. You
might tag this site, algebra, bestof, tutorial, math,
and homework, then click save to save it on the
delicious website.
– When you save a page like this, two things happen.
•
First, the site is saved with all your other
bookmarks on delicious.
• Second, the tags are saved in a list of all your
tags. You just repeat this process for every site
you want to save. This is bookmarking.
5. • Why Tags are so Important
– Let's fast forward two months to
make our second point:
Why tags are so important.
– Let's say you now have a hundred
bookmarked sites. Chaos, right?
Well, since your added tags, you
have a way to sort the bookmarks by
the tags you assigned.
– To find all your sites about algebra,
you click the algebra tag, and voilà,
one hundred becomes three. All your
bookmarks are now
more findable thanks to tags.
– But that's only part of the fun.
• The Social Aspect of Bookmarking
– Now, let's look at the social part of
bookmarking to make our third
point.
– Think about your fellow teachers.
Couldn't they benefit from seeing
your bookmarks?
– Well, they can. Delicious bookmarks
are public. This means your friends
and peers can see your bookmarks
and use your tags just like you.
That's why this is called social
bookmarking. Your bookmarks can
benefit other people.
– Think about it this way. You start
bookmarking algebra sites, and your
peers can see the interesting sites
you find. Then, they start
bookmarking too. Within a few
weeks, a group of teachers are all
bookmarking their favorite math
websites, and because they're all
public, everyone discovers new and
relevant material.
– Together you create a network that
produces a steady stream of
interesting and useful websites, all
organized by tags on the delicious
website. The lesson is that social
bookmarking sites take a world of
chaos and make it orderly.
6. • Review
– Remember there are
three steps to get started.
– 1) First go to delicious to
sign up and add the
buttons to your browser.
– 2) Second, start
bookmarking sites with
tags.
– 3) And third, be social.
Notice how useful and
fun other people's
bookmarks can be.
• Learn, explore and
discover what new
media social
technologies are all
about by checking out
the CommonCraft Show
.
