Thursday, March 28, 2013

Social Bookmarking

I got signed up with Diigo easily enough, and filled out an application for the educator account. I still haven't heard back on that, but I explored Diigo with my basic account. I decided to just use the Diigolet while I was testing it, so I dragged that to my toolbar with no problem. When I tried to use it, however, big problem--it kept asking me to log in (even though I was already), when I logged in, it would just say that Diigolet failed. I got frustrated and gave up, then came back to it today and tried posting it as a bug in the User forum. Then found it listed as a bug with Firefox, and a suggested fix was to allow third-party cookies or put diigo.com as an exception. I did the latter, and voila, it worked.

Now this leads me to a concern I have with all these Web 2.0 tools. It seems like they want to leave cookies of all sorts, or in the case of blogging, won't work because of cookies, in which case you're supposed to clear out all your cache and cookies to make a dumb comment on a blog. I am not sure if this problem is specific to Firefox, and perhaps another browser such as Chrome works better. Maybe I'll try Chrome, as has been suggested to me. When I find time.

Anyway, back to Diigo. I added a few things to my library. One is an article from the Center for History and New Media about the benefits and perils of the wealth of primary historical sources being digitized and available on the Internet at the Library of Congress and elsewhere. Another is an article on Newport and leisure, which I can use in my course on Consumer Culture, where I talk about conspicuous consumption and use Newport as an example. The other two are biographies of a woman who wrote an article that I am going to use in the book I'm working on. So it's a variety of things. I highlighted some things on them, and did a few sticky notes, and created tags. You can check out my diigo library here. Finally, I checked out a few of the most popular bookmarked sites. I saw the tags for the articles, but didn't see any comments or highlighting when I clicked on them. So I'm not sure how that works. My favorite of the ones I looked at was Slate's piece on Google Reader joining the "graveyard of dead Google products." It had tombstones for all the different dead products, and you can click on it to place flowers on the graves. If you haven't seen this yet, it's worth a giggle: Google graveyard. I found this particularly funny since I just had to open a Google Reader account for TOEP. Another danger of the ole Web 2.0, I guess.

4 comments:

  1. I enjoyed the Google graveyard! I had not spent much time on Google products prior to the Tools of Engagement journey and was surprised to find how many different products were available. Now I am surprised to see how many are already outdated!! I found an interesting article on how Web 2.0 is quickly becoming passe and the future is all about mobile devices. I would imagine we can plan for another TOEP with mobile devices! I am ready - I haven't been without my ipad in almost 3 years.

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  2. I hadn't seen the Google Graveyard before. Thanks for sharing. I placed my flower with iGoogle. It was great while I used it and am wondering what might come around to fill its functionalities. I was saddened to see that a grave for Google Glass is already been dug.

    How insightful Kelly - All throughout our planning we talked about various ways to include info about all the mobile apps, with many that are associated with the tools included in TOEP. We finally settled on and were planning to add a section called, "There's an app for that!" Time got away from being able to add this to TOEP, but it will most likely be one of the first additions to TOEP in phase 2. We've also had a number of conversations regarding the use of the term Web 2.0. Is it too dated?

    Again, a purpose of TOEP is to help all of you to acquire new knowledge about how to think about the use of these types of tools for learning, and to be able to adapt to this constantly changing environment.

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  3. I'd like to share some of my thoughts on the potential of using Chrome. I recently switched from Firefox to Chrome. What was the deciding factor for me was the ability to sync my bookmarks anywhere I was able to login and use Chrome as my browser. This has some advantages and disadvantages over social-bookmarking tools like Diigo.

    A disadvantage is that the Chrome synced bookmarks are only mine. This can also be viewed as an advantage to keep some things private. Social bookmarking tools often do have the option to selectively keep some URLs private. When I want a group or a class to gather and share resources I turn to Diigo and Zotero. Zotero is a citation management tool mentioned in another section.

    The biggest advantage is that I can easily access all my bookmarks across all my devices easily and quickly. The need to go to the Diigo site and wait for the page load-up is eliminated.

    I guess this is part of the back-story about why it's difficult to always find the best tool for the job at hand because there are just so many choices. It may also be why some tools fade out and others so regularly take their place.

    Anyhow, the need to "toss your cookies" each time you wish to comment on someone else's blog isn't how it should work. If the problem happened again after you tossed your cookies the 1st time, then something is strange. Don't be concerned about commenting on other's blogs. Although TOEP has attempted to build a community of learners, it's not something that you need to dwell on. Your own reflective blog posts are wonderful examples of your personal learning progress in TOEP.

    PS - I just love being able to say, "toss your cookies." : )

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  4. I am trying to comment using Safari. The first time didn't work--same old, same old problem. Gives me an error code which, when I check in Blogger, doesn't come up with any info! But now I am trying again and it actually shows Red Ellen in the "Comment as" box, so I have a good feeling about it. It seems that for me, at least, the comment function is very buggy on Blogger. I don't know if anyone else is having this problem or if I'm just special!
    Ellen

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