My 2000th Bookmark

Today I created my 2000th bookmark in my Delicious account:

• Panabee
  Panabee is a faster way to search and compare sites. See results from Google, Bing, Twitter, Amazon, Wikipedia, and others with one click. View sites side-by-side.
  (tags: comparison metacrawler research)

It was included in an earlier post today with other bookmarks I created today.

Presentation: “Integrating Social Networking & Web 2.0 Applications into eLearning”

Presentation:  “Integrating Social Networking & Web 2.0 Applications into eLearning“

Research Journal Assignment #2

Learn about Social Bookmarking:

Use any or all of the following resources to learn about social bookmarking in general and Delicious in particular:

• Video:  “Social Bookmarking in Plain English“
• Webpage:  “Help on Delicious“
• Webpage:  “What’s New on Delicious“
• Video:  “Social Bookmarking – Delicious Part One“
• Video:  “Social Bookmarking – Delicious Part Two“
• Video:  “How to Use Delicious – Basic function“
• Article:  “7 Things You Should Know about Social Bookmarking“
• Presentation:  “Instructional Uses of Social Bookmarking” (with voice)

Create a Delicious Account:

Register for a social bookmarking account with Delicious. Please make sure that your username includes your first and/or last name, so I can identify your account.

Start bookmarking websites you want to use for class. These can be related to your topic or to research in general. Be sure you tag your bookmarks so you can find them again.

Feel free to explore my bookmarks and save any that you find interesting.

Post in Your Blog:

Post three times  in your blog (research journal), using the numbers, letters, and phrases in bold as the titles of your respective posts:

RJA #2a: Possible Topics–Brainstorm a list of topics you’re interested in using for your research project this semester.  Identify which topic you have selected, keeping in mind the following guidelines:

• Select a topic that interests you because you’ll be reading, researching, and writing about it all semester.
• Select a topic that is academic or scholarly (i.e., on that would be covered in a college class probably in the arts, sciences, or social sciences) and on which reasonable and knowledgeable people disagree.
• Select a topic that you can cover adequately in 3,600 words.
• Select a topic for which you can find the required sources (see the syllabus).
• Select a topic with which you are not already too familiar.
• Select a topic that has not been used too much.

RJA #2b: Research Topic–Write three paragraphs about the topic you’ve selected: (1) identify your topic and explain why you chose it, (2) discuss what you already know about your topic, and (3) discuss what you don’t know and want to learn about the topic. Each paragraph should be at least several sentences long. Grammar and spelling count!

RJA #2c: Delicious Account–Create a link to your Delicious account.  For help on creating a link on your blog, watch this video.

Use the department and course number (ENG 1020 or ENG 122) and other appropriate tags (”Labels” on Blogger) for each of the three posts.

My Twines

I joined Twine more than a year ago, but I didn’t get around to exploring it until this week.  I’ve joined the following twines, “interest networks”:

• 2.0 World
• Educational Technology
• learning_with_web2.0
• Online Education
• Search
• Search and Discovery
• Social Media
• Star Trek
• Twitter Guide

I subscribed to RSS feeds for all of them and tried out the bookmarklet, which doesn’t seem to allow the user to specify which twine to add the item to.

I can see how Twine could be useful for my second-semester composition students.  They could find or create twines related to their research topics.

Wordle: My Delicious Tags 3-09

Wordle: My Delicious Tags 3-09

Internet Research Presentation

Internet Research Presentation

Research Journal Assignment #1

Post three times  in your blog (research journal), using the numbers, letters, and phrases in bold as the titles of your respective posts:

1a: Possible Topics–Brainstorm a list of topics you’re interested in using for your research project this semester.

1b: My Topic–Write three paragraphs about the topic you’ve selected: (1) identify your topic and explain why you chose it, (2) discuss what you already know about your topic, and (3) discuss what you don’t know and want to learn about the topic. Each paragraph should be at least several sentences long. Grammar and spelling count!

1c:  Delicious Account–Create a link to your Delicious account.

Use the department and course number (ENG 1020 or ENG 122) and other appropriate tags (“Labels” on Blogger) for each of the three posts.

Bookmarking Account

Use any or all of the following resources to learn about social bookmarking in general, Delicious specifically, and tagging:

• Video:  “Social Bookmarking in Plain English“
• Video:  “Social Bookmarking – Delicious Part One“
• Video:  “Social Bookmarking – Delicious Part Two“
• Article:  “7 Things You Should Know about Social Bookmarking“
• Presentation:  “Instructional Uses of Social Bookmarking” (with voice)
• Video:  “Tagging & Folksonomy“
• Video:  “Tags:  Content Tagging and Its Importance“
• Article:  “Tags“
• Article:  “Tags and Tagging: How Do You Create Good Tags?“
• Presentation:  “Tagging That Works“
• Presentation:  “Tagging“
• Presentation:  “Tagging in an Academic Setting“

Register for a social bookmarking account with Delicious. Please make sure that your username includes your first and/or last name, so I can identify your account.

Start bookmarking websites you want to keep track of for class. These can be related to your topic or to research in general. Be sure you tag your bookmarks so you can find them again.

Feel free to explore my bookmarks and save any that you find interesting.

Using Delicious for Composition Classes

As I wrote last month, I used Wetpaint wikis for my on-campus classes last semester.  Students in my ENG 1020 class at Metropolitan State College of Denver and my ENG 122 classes, one on campus and one online, for Red Rocks Community College were required to create bookmarking accounts on Delicious to keep track of useful websites they found during their research.  Their bookmarks counted for 5% of their final grades.

As I mentioned in that previous post, for their final research journal (blog) assignment students in those classes were asked to “[d]iscuss the usefulness and effectiveness of the internet tools you used in the class: the blog [for a research journal], the Delicious bookmarks, and the wikis.”

They had the following comments about using Delicious bookmarks:

• “I especially enjoyed the bookmarks! I will definitely continue to use my delicious account in the future.”
• “The Delicious account, I thought to be a good tool for efficiently getting to the few websites I used. It also has great potential for future classes. I plan on using it for my future assignments and projects.”
• “The delicious account is awesome i will continue to use it for other papers or just in general web sites that I want to remember without using my Favorites tab.”
• “Out of all the internet resources that we used over the semester, I found bookmarks the most useful. It allowed me to keep track of any sources, that I thought could be of use to my writing.”
• “And finally I also enjoyed the delicious account, it was nice having a backup of your websites and not having to go search to find where you originally found them. Sometimes there was problems with logging in, but after I remembered my password it worked again. And I also do belive I will continue to use delicious because of its usefulness. . . .”
• “The Delicious bookmarking account was great as well. I will definately keep using this site and my account in the future. It is great for when I am working on things at a friend’s computer or at work so that I do not have to write down all my websites and information. What a clever idea.”
• “The Delicious account was also knew to me and actually something I appreciated. I used it a lot to keep track of sources and definitely plan to continue using that site in the future. I think it will really help me keep track of my research.”
• “The Delicious account was especially helpful for organizing and finding sources.”
• “Delicious is one of the best tools that I have found. It makes everything so convenient, from my research on schizophrenia to just my everyday things that I like to look up.”
• “Delicious is also really cool when working on papers, projects, and research.”
• “The delicious account was alright, truthfully I did not use very often. If I really need to find something I can just go back and search for it. It is nice to have it all with one click, but if you don’t utilize the resource to begin with, it’s pointless.”
• “The Delicious bookmarks idea was a really good idea. I didn’t find it very effective, but it’s the same story as the research blog. If I had made use of it, I could have benefitted. Instead, I just wrote down the sites I used or tried to remember them.”
• “Delicious is a very interesting website. I think it is a good idea to bookmark interesting webpages. I will try to get in the habit of doing so. With delicious the bookmarks are saved online, so that they can be accessed from any computer rather than just your own.”
• “The one that was the most useful to me is the delicious account; since I don’t always do school work on the same computer each time, it was very handy to have all of my sources available regardless of where I was.”

I definitely intend to keep this assignment for second-semester composition classes I teach in the future.  I think I need to do a better job of teaching my students about tagging, both for their Delicious accounts and for their research journals.  In addition, this coming semester I want to stress searching Delicious for relevant websites, possibly using Bookmarks InSuggest.

New Addition to Recommended Reading List

I’ve added Ellyssa Kroski’s Web 2.0 for Librarians and Information Professionals to my Recommended Reading list.  Even though it’s written for librarians, it’s a good introduction to web 2.0.  She has chapters on the following:

• web 2.0
• blogs
• RSS and newsreaders
• wikis
• social bookmarking
• photo sharing
• social cataloging
• video sharing
• personalized start pages
• social networking software
• vertical search engines
• social news
• answers technology
• virtual worlds
• productivity tools
• podcasting
• mashups

I do have a couple of objections to her classifications:  (1) She included Second Life in a book on “web 2.0.”  To access Second Life, you have to download their software; it cannot be accessed on the web (i.e., by using a browser).  Therefore, in my mind, it doesn’t belong in this book.  (2) She included Ning in a chapter on “Mashups” when it clearly fits under social networks.