(from the March 2007 Emerging Technologies and Pie Presentation)
Del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, and similar services, allow users to store their collections (of bookmarks, photos, videos, etc.) online. These files can be shared with individuals, groups, or the world. Each item can also be tagged with keywords supplied by the poster (or other users). This “folksonomy” is more casual than library indexing, and can be the source of interesting connections, or frustration. Such sites can provide an easy way to post and comment on course work, or can be an environment to look at what is being posted and tagged by the society at large.
ELI Seven Things: Social Bookmarking
http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7001
Delicious
Used to collect links to online resources. Links can be tagged by the poster and “bundled” into groups of related tags. You can view links that others have posted by creating a “subscription” that displays recent links with specific tags or by specific people. You can also create a “network” of other Delicious users and send out specific links to those people.
The Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users
http://slackermanager.com/2005/12/the_several_hab.html
Sample Delicious Site for Cryptozoology 101
http://del.icio.us/crypto101
Flickr
Flickr is used to post and share photographs. Photos can be tagged with keywords and specific groups can be created to collect photos about specific topics. Students can search tags to find images that relate to topics they are covering. Students can also post their own photos to share with the class (these collections can be open to the public or restricted to “members-only” groups. Each photo can have comments attached to it, either in popup windows on the image itself or on a comments log on the page below.
YouTube
YouTube is used to post and share small digital videos. Videos can be tagged with keywords and are arranged by category or channel (same poster, different episodes). It is also possible to create “playlists” of specific postings. Once a video has been posted, you can post or email a “permalink” URL to share it with others or paste the “embeddable player” code into a Web page or blog entry to bring the video directly on to your page.
ELI Seven Things: YouTube
http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7018
Example Playlist: TJ Walker’s videos about PowerPoint:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=33C3EC79A32DEED6