Comments on: Digg for Education? http://www.edtechtesol.org/blog/2007/10/04/digg-for-education/ Discussion and Exploration into Technology and Language Learning Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:38:02 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Adam http://www.edtechtesol.org/blog/2007/10/04/digg-for-education/comment-page-1/#comment-60 Adam Sun, 11 Nov 2007 10:21:25 +0000 http://www.edtechtesol.org/blog/2007/10/04/digg-for-education/#comment-60 Hi Stephen, I am interested in the social aspect as well. To answer your question directly, most of the "social" interaction, I believe, occurs without leaving a record visual record (at least one that the public can see). Voting, discussions, etc. do not occur as much as profile reading, searching, and the like. I find (at this point anecdotally) that people check profiles of folks who share interesting resources. They cite the profiles as the sociability and credibility affordances of the site. Rather than communicating directly, people seem to be clicking on resources they deem "credible" based upon a cursory overview of user profiles. So why not del.icio.us? I certainly still use del.icio.us; however, I use it for a different purpose. Edtags provides an environment for educators where I can assume, by virtue of the community's composition, that the resources have been vetted by educators. Del.icio.us tends to be a tech-heavy free-for-all. Both have their place in the world, and many members of our community use both sites. I, for example, save education-related materials to edtags, save non-education related materials privately on edtags, and surf del.icio.us' top ten most popular posts several times a day. I also monitor edtags RSS feeds from my courses via unique course tags: <a href="http://edtags.org/tags.php/t529" rel="nofollow">http://edtags.org/tags.php/t529</a>. Thanks for the post and I hope to benefit from many more of your saved resources. --Adam Hi Stephen,
I am interested in the social aspect as well. To answer your question directly, most of the “social” interaction, I believe, occurs without leaving a record visual record (at least one that the public can see). Voting, discussions, etc. do not occur as much as profile reading, searching, and the like. I find (at this point anecdotally) that people check profiles of folks who share interesting resources. They cite the profiles as the sociability and credibility affordances of the site. Rather than communicating directly, people seem to be clicking on resources they deem “credible” based upon a cursory overview of user profiles.

So why not del.icio.us? I certainly still use del.icio.us; however, I use it for a different purpose. Edtags provides an environment for educators where I can assume, by virtue of the community’s composition, that the resources have been vetted by educators. Del.icio.us tends to be a tech-heavy free-for-all. Both have their place in the world, and many members of our community use both sites.

I, for example, save education-related materials to edtags, save non-education related materials privately on edtags, and surf del.icio.us’ top ten most popular posts several times a day. I also monitor edtags RSS feeds from my courses via unique course tags: http://edtags.org/tags.php/t529.

Thanks for the post and I hope to benefit from many more of your saved resources.

–Adam

]]> By: Stephen Henneberry http://www.edtechtesol.org/blog/2007/10/04/digg-for-education/comment-page-1/#comment-58 Stephen Henneberry Sat, 10 Nov 2007 08:42:49 +0000 http://www.edtechtesol.org/blog/2007/10/04/digg-for-education/#comment-58 Adam, Thanks for checking in. I have been thinking about a follow-up to this post, as I am really wondering about that social aspect. Do educators really want to discuss shared links, or just share them? This leads me back to the del.icio.us question: Would it be easier to just share your del.icio.us account with collaborators instead? Either way, I find your project very interesting, and I will continue to follow it. You seem to be developing a very interesting resource, so I am sure you will do well with it. Cheers Adam,
Thanks for checking in. I have been thinking about a follow-up to this post, as I am really wondering about that social aspect. Do educators really want to discuss shared links, or just share them? This leads me back to the del.icio.us question: Would it be easier to just share your del.icio.us account with collaborators instead?
Either way, I find your project very interesting, and I will continue to follow it. You seem to be developing a very interesting resource, so I am sure you will do well with it.
Cheers

]]> By: Adam http://www.edtechtesol.org/blog/2007/10/04/digg-for-education/comment-page-1/#comment-57 Adam Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:15:22 +0000 http://www.edtechtesol.org/blog/2007/10/04/digg-for-education/#comment-57 Actually, Edtags is open to the world! We disallow robots and spiders from parsing the site, so we do not get much search engine traffic. We also monitor the community to ensure the members are *genuinely* interested in the field of education. Therefore, many of our members hear of Edtags through teacher/professor networks or word-of-mouth. We would love more active participants from outside of Harvard--so feel free to join and start saving and sharing bookmarks. And, yes, it is a doctoral research project: One that I hope will ultimately help me graduate ; ) --Adam Actually, Edtags is open to the world! We disallow robots and spiders from parsing the site, so we do not get much search engine traffic. We also monitor the community to ensure the members are *genuinely* interested in the field of education. Therefore, many of our members hear of Edtags through teacher/professor networks or word-of-mouth. We would love more active participants from outside of Harvard–so feel free to join and start saving and sharing bookmarks.

And, yes, it is a doctoral research project: One that I hope will ultimately help me graduate ; )

–Adam

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