Web-tagging technologies: "social bookmarking" sites like del.icio.us and Technorati are going mainstream.When teachers in Oregon's Meriwether Lewis Elementary school elementary school: see school. want to review resources on emerging Internet technologies earmarked by tech-savvy principal Tim Laner, they can visit his page on the free del.icio.us Web site. At this "social bookmarking Ranking a Web site by users who like the content rather than by the total number of links to the site. Social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us) let users tag their favorite sites with key words and post them for others to see. See folksonomy and page ranking. " site, they will see links he has grouped or "tagged" by keywords, including RSS (Really Simple Syndication) A syndication format that was developed by Netscape in 1999 and became very popular for aggregating updates to blogs and the news sites. RSS has also stood for "Rich Site Summary" and "RDF Site Summary. , podcasts, weblogs and Wikipedia. "I find del.icio.us to be a great tool to organize Web data and share it with others," he says. Similarly, Lauer assigns "Technorati tags"--such as Google Earth A 3D mapping program from Google that covers the entire globe from satellite images. Requiring a download for Windows, Mac and Linux desktops, a street address can be searched, and the views can be zoomed down to the individual building all the way up to a satellite's view of the globe. , Gmail or MapBuilder--to the topic of each entry in his Education/Technology blog, so the Technorati blog-indexing tool will compile his thoughts on various subjects, and report them with other items given the same tags. Lauer also uses tag labels such as schoolart and scienceproject to post albums of school-related pictures on the photosharing site Fliekr. Whether applied to Web sites, blogs or media, tagging technologies enable users to quickly find specific online content, and offer powerful grassroots alternatives to traditional searches. Tagging has been described as the "next big thing in search tools." Sharpened Searches Although Americans conduct nearly 200 million Internet searches daily, a recent survey by the Pew PEW. A seat in a church separated from all others, with a convenient space to stand therein. 2. It is an incorporeal interest in the real property. And, although a man has the exclusive right to it, yet, it seems, he cannot maintain trespass against a person Internet & American Life Project found only 17 percent say they always find what they are looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. with search engines. Instead, many users express frustration with inefficient results spread across hundreds of pages selected by computer algorithms rather than humans. Furthermore, links to "favorite" sites are usually saved in long haphazard lists on single computers, so retrieving resources is onerous. In contrast, items that individuals tag with descriptive labels are grouped by categories on personal Web pages that can be kept private or made public, are accessible through any online computer at school or at home, can easily be e-mailed to students and colleagues, and continue to be available online even if machines crash or are replaced. And while users can gain the benefit of reviewing resources others have deemed useful on various topics, those who register can tag resources they wish to track in their own words. Some sites such as del.icio.us also offer downloadable toolbar A row or column of on-screen buttons used to activate functions in the application. Many toolbars are customizable, letting you add and delete buttons as required. Toolbars may be fixed in position or may float, which means they can be dragged to a more convenient location in the buttons for tagging sites at the click of a mouse, and allow users to comment on items and rate their quality. The effectiveness of tagging services depends on the quality and quantity of the tagged searches that are saved. Users also need to agree on tag names tag name - generic identifier in order to share information, for example, "staff development" compared to "professional education." Not enough people are yet tagging online materials, but interest is building rapidly, and last year Technorati received more than 81 million posts with tags. Tagging tools for specialized applications such as news, business and shopping resources are also coming online, and examples include Digg.com, PreFound.com, Scuttle.org, Shadows.com and Wink.com. Fast Forward While tagging in schools has essentially been limited so far to early-adopter tekkies, the recent acquisition of del.icio.us by Yahoo, and the integration of tagging features into Yahoo's My Web personal search tool, will help bring the technology into the mainstream. It is also predicted that tags will eventually be added to the major search engines including AOL (A division of Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY, www.aol.com) The world's largest online information service with access to the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms and a variety of databases and services. Search, Google, MSN Search MSN Search was a search engine by Microsoft that comprised a search engine, index, and web crawler. As of September 12, 2006, MSN Search is now Live Search. This offers users the ability to search for specific types of information using search tabs that include Web, news, images, and Yahoo. Tagging technologies offer tremendous power for your staff and students to discover, manage and share online information, and you can use the resources below to get started. Never lose a good link again! RESOURCES Del.icio.us del.icio.us Technorati www.technorati.com Flickr www.flickr.com Education/Technology tim.lauer.name My Web myweb2.search.yahoo.com Odvard Egil Dyrli, dyrli@uconn.edu, is senior editor and emeritus professor of education at the University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut is the State of Connecticut's land-grant university. It was founded in 1881 and serves more than 27,000 students on its six campuses, including more than 9,000 graduate students in multiple programs. UConn's main campus is in Storrs, Connecticut. . |
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