First, let me say that I don't like the term social bookmarking. I think it works against the conversation we've been having about the difference between friendship-driven networking and interest-driven networking. Social bookmarking is not about keeping track of your Facebook friends. It's about keeping track of your interests. As you sweep across the Net, you come across tidbits that you think might be of use to you later on, if you only had a way to keep them, but you don't, so you move on, and now that piece of valuable info is lost forever. Social bookmarking changes all that.
And that brings me to the second problem I have with the video, it uses Del.icio.us as the social bookmarking tool. Now, Del.icio.us is a fine bookmarking tool, but I've been using Diigo for about two years now, and I prefer it. Why? Because it allows you to annotate your book marks (make those marginal notes & highlights that scholars like to make in books and journals), and I like its networking capabilities. The Diigo About page says it best: "Diigo is two services in one -- it is a research and collaborative research tool on the one hand, and a knowledge-sharing community and social content site on the other." Here's the Diigo introductory video to explain it better.
So for this class, let's use Diigo. Go to diigo.com and sign up for an account. Diigo is not a Google tool, so you'll have to make up a new account name and password. Please use a name that the rest of us can identify. Then read the About page.
Getting an individual account is enough for a start, but eventually we will want to create a group to share our bookmarks. I will be bookmarking mostly about Web 2.0 and Web 2.0 tools (Google, Facebook, Diigo, etc.). I want you to have access to my reading, and we all want access to yours.
I could set up the group for the class, but I prefer that you do it yourselves. Let me make this suggestion to avoid several of you making duplicate groups at the same time: if you become interested, then learn something about how to make a diigo group before you make one. Gather (in class or online) with others in both Mon/Wed classes who also become interested in diigo, network, and come up with the best solution to forming a group for both IDST classes. This will be the first IDST group, and I want it to continue for my IDST classes in the future, so think WAY outside our little class box.
Here's incentive: the people who network together to form this diigo group for the class can count this as 2 projects. To complete the project:
- they must set up a gDoc called Using the IDST diigo Group,
- they must learn how to create a diigo group,
- they must create the group, and then
- they must meet with BOTH classes to teach the rest of us how to work the diigo group.
