Educators worldwide seem to have latched on to social bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, Furl and others, but why not take it a step further? Personally, I like to take a look through the links of others in my network, but sometimes the plain links don’t tell the whole story. Why did they save that link? What is special about it? What do they think about it? These questions all pass through my mind as I view these links, and it makes me wish that these services offered “discuss this” links. Sure, I could simply email my comments and/or questions, but why not have that built in? Wouldn’t that put a little more ‘social’ in social bookmarking?
So this is why my interest was peaked when I saw that my hosting service added a new “one-click install” to the Goodies section. The new software is Pligg, and it is an open source Digg clone. I couldn’t resist, so I decided to install the program to see how hard it is to set up and get running. As I write this now, I am still waiting for the “one-click install” to complete. Any moment now…
Before deciding to give Pligg a try, I did to a quick search for social bookmarking sites specifically for educators, but I did not find much. One interesting site is Edtags.org, which seems to be the work of a doctoral student at Harvard. It is interesting, but seems to be for the use of Harvard students and staff only. Perhaps this is only while they work out the system? I was surprised though as their seems to be little “social” activity on the site currently. They claim over 500 users, but the articles with the highest “votes” only seem to have around three! I was also unable, in my brief search, to find an article that had been commented on. The site seems to be a work in progress, and you can get more details from their blog. I will probably keep an eye on this one, as it would be interesting if they opened it up beyond the Harvard community.
In the meantime, I guess I will just be playing with Pligg, as I would love to see a fully functioning Digg-type site specifically for educators…
Do you think that educators would use such a tool? The Edtags site does seem to lack in the actual social interaction aspect. They have the communication tools built-in and available, and they are certainly sharing links, but are they discussing them? Are they interacting in any real way? After all, without the communication aspect, why not just share a del.icio.us account? Don’t get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for their work, I am just curious why so little discussion seems to evolve from the sharing…
As to the site itself, it provides users with three main sections for Learning, Practicing, and Sharing. The Learning sections is focused around courses with online lessons, the Practice section involves scripted speaking activities, both individual and with a partner, and directed writings. These activities can be reviewed by native speaker members in the Share section. Currently, they only have lessons available in six languages, but perhaps they have more on the way. Users can still use the social aspect in many languages even if they are not yet supported by Courses on the site. The landing page for members lists other members who are native speakers of languages you are studying, and members who are studying the same languages as you. These are listed under the heading of “Make Friends Now!” This may lead to making international connections with fellow students or native speakers of languages in your profile. The opportunity for authentic communication is great, and I know that my English students here in Japan have few such chances. Maybe this new tool will put a dent in some of the “practice English with me” calls I used to get so often on Skype…
