Ponderings Eight: Planting a seed
Posted by: scutter33 in Del.icio.us, Online communities, Ponderings, WikisThis week I will be presenting an item to our monthly staff information session about technology in education. Why? Well we are embarking on the introduction of elearning within my workplace and, as part of the planning process, it think that it is vital that staff start thinking about how they want to ‘deploy’ elearning within their particular training unit. To kick this whole process off I want to provide some food for thought. My presentation will focus on learning communities, wikis and social bookmarking (via del.icio.us). Why these technologies? Well I wanted to use technologies that were a little outside the square but not technologically impossible and these seemed to fit the bill. All of them offer great scope for new ways of learning without fear to hitting too great an IT wall! My inclusion of del.icio.us was also guided by my desire (see Ponderings Four) to get staff to centrally capture the online learning that many of them do. Hopefully my planting will bear a bountiful harvest, only time will tell!
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April 20th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Mal
Here are some of my observations about del.icio.us that you might like to think about when preparing to sell it to your colleagues. I had to overcome thsee hurdles to get as enthusiastic about it as you are.
The single word tag is annoying. But there is a work around. PowerPoint works and so does power-point.
Which brings me to annoyance number 2 - power-point and PowerPoint are different tags. as is powerpoint, and “powerpoint”.
but there is a quick way to change your tags on the settings page, so that they can all be aligned.
One thing I particularly like is the bundling facility, which is also at the settings page. PowerPoint and projectors and slideshows and speeches can all be bundled together as presentations. So now I can search for specific items like projectors or general items that relate to presentations.
Another concern is the privacy issue.
I have tagged mine in an account under my own name. I wouldn’t do it hat way next time and when I find time will be deleting it.
If I tag the Cathy Morgan blog taht you recommend in an earlier post I find that 18 other people have already done so. one of these is Calusia who also has tagged 31 items and has 11 people in her network, one of whom is Tracy. Tracy has 231 items tagged and 13 people in her network. Both of the people that i looked up happened to be totallly dedicated e-learnings keptics, but do I need to know about everything taht they tagged - which may include their religious beliefs and their dietary and other preferences. There is probably enough information in their taggings to buold upo a profile. I don’t need to or want to. But there are probably lots of reasons for making your tag ID anonymous - as I notice you have.
One way to avoid having a list of tags that is longer than the article you are tagging is to accept the suggested tags that the program offers.
I agree with you that del.icio.us is a great feature. I hope you have success intrdoucing it. you might like to consider my observations when preparing for possible questions.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:51 am
Thanks for your excellent suggestions John. I didn’t know about the bundling facility, that’s sounds particularly useful. I agree there are major issues with the tagging which is why I have chosen to have the tags done centrally by our library staff. That way they should stay consistent. We will also be choosing some unique tags that allow our staff to quickly id our tags without having to wade through pages and pages (kind of like we have done with the EMT1 tag). I have been grappling with how to register the account. I agree that doing it under my name is not preferable, and I will have to think longer about how best to do it.
Mal.