Mike Taylor

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Tag: Diigo

  • Social Bookmarking: Your Favorites Really Want to be Free

    Social Bookmarking: Your Favorites Really Want to be Free

    Raise your hand if you’ve ever experienced any of these things:

    • A computer crash wiped out all of the favorites from your web browser
    • You wanted to access a bookmark on your work computer from home (Or vice versa)
    • You couldn’t find a bookmark you know you saved because there are too many or you didn’t remember which folder you put it in.

    For those of you raising your hand, this post is for you. For everyone else, you’re lucky (so far) and this post is for you too. Keep reading to find out why.

    Social bookmarking can solve all of those problems and bring you additional benefits you probably haven’t even thought of. Your first question may be, “What the heck is social bookmarking?”

    TLDR: If you’re short on time grab this quick start guide to social bookmarking

    Quick Start-Social Bookmarking

    What is Social Bookmarking?

    Social bookmarking is a better way to save the websites and online resources you want to keep track of. Instead of your bookmarks being locked away in the browser your computer, social bookmarks live online where they can be accessed from anywhere and easily shared with others.

    This makes your bookmarks available to you anywhere in the world you have an internet connection and 100% immune to computer failures. It also makes finding that one unique site you bookmarked 3 years ago easier to find. Here’s how…

    The only option for organizing the bookmarks in your browser is to put them into folders. The challenge with that is a bookmark can only live in one folder. Social bookmarking improves upon this by letting you tag the things you find with multiple keywords or tags. Tagging can eliminate (or at least minimize) time-sucking searches for that elusive bookmark you know is in there somewhere. Let’s see how.

    Tagging

    Tagging is a flexible, informal way of categorizing that allows you to associate keywords with online content (web pages, pictures & posts). Even if you’re not sure what tagging is, you’ve already seen it in action on sites like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Diigo, and many others.

    Unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines (i.e., Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing you to create connections between data any way you want. (BTW, the art of tagging by folks who are not librarians or catalogers is called “folksonomy.”)

    Tagging helps bring order to online content. You can think of a tag as a topic. Adding a tag (or #hashtag) to your tweet, blog post, photo, video, etc makes it easier for people to find and follow the content related to a certain topic. For example, you might want to tag that cool elearning example you found with tags like elearning, storyline, xapi, etc.

    Watch this video to learn more about how social bookmarking works.
    (NOTE: Delicious isn’t a thing anymore but Diigo works the same way.)

    https://www.commoncraft.com/video/social-bookmarking

    While the video uses delicious to demonstrate social bookmarking, it isn’t around anymore and I recommend another one called Diigo (pronounced Dee-go).

    Here’s a walkthrough of how you can use Diigo to collect and organize online resources.

    Sharing

    Diigo has some additional features that are nice including the ability to share bookmarks with a group of people. ( Feel free to join our Learn Camp group and share your links with us! ) As Harold Jarche says, social bookmarks are “the simplest way to start sharing organizational knowledge”.

    Social bookmarks are “the simplest way to start sharing organizational knowledge”.

    Social bookmarks are fantastic for L&D pros. Especially for anyone who likes to share links and resources along with their workshops or conference presentations and the like. Whenever I lead one of the ATD Certificate Workshops I share a collection of examples, job aids, and other resources with everyone.

    By using Diigo, I can share a single link that provides everything I want to share. That link never changes and the best part is that after the workshop is over I can add new things and the collection is automatically updated. People from last years workshop will see the latest and greatest. If they join the group or follow via RSS, they’ll also get notifications when something new is added. How sweet is that?

    Yes, you can also save private bookmarks.

    You can find me and the rest of my bookmarks on Diigo at http://diigo.com/user/tmiket.

    Discovery & Following

    As if all of that isn’t enough, another big benefit is the ability to see what other smart people are bookmarking. Here are a couple great examples of smart people sharing great bookmarks:

    Pro Tip: Follow these or any of your other favorites in Feedly and you’ll always know when any new items are added.

    3 Reasons to Try Social Bookmarking

    To wrap things up, here are 3 reasons you really should give social bookmarking a try:

    1. You’ll free your bookmarks from your computer so they are safer and you can access them from anywhere
    2. Tagging makes it is easier to actually find what you save when you need it
    3. Sharing your bookmarks with others is MUCH easier and this is a great way to start working out loud to help others learn along with you.

    Getting Started

    I’m confident that once you try social bookmarking, you’ll never want to go back to the old way.

    For me, the key is making the process as frictionless as possible. Grab the browser extension or the bookmarklet to make saving a 1-click deal. Add the app to your mobile device to organize resources even when you’re away from your computer.

    Here are a couple of the most common apps for changing the way you save and organize your online resources:

    Diigo

    1. Sign up
    2. Grab the browser extension, bookmarklet, and/or the mobile app
    3. Start saving
    4. (Optional) Learn more about getting started

    Pinterest

    1. Sign up
    2. Grab the browser extension, bookmarklet, and/or the mobile app
    3. Start saving
    4. (Optional) Learn more about getting started

    Now It’s Your Turn

    Do you already use any social bookmarking tools such as Diigo, delicious or Pinterest?

    What benefits could you see from having access to what others are bookmarking?

    How could this be used for learning/training?

    What else would you like to know?

  • My PKM Process

    My PKM Process

    Shannon Tipton, recently asked if I could share my process for keeping up with the topics I’m interested in and how I curate the best thing that I find along the way.

    Here is a video walking through my personal set up for keeping up, organizing and sharing — and doing it efficiently with a minimal time commitment.

    I’ve been introducing these steps to my team here at Mindset Digital and have shared some tips for getting started with each step of the process:

    I’d love to hear from you if you have any questions or comments. And I’d love to hear what your process is too!

     

  • Social Bookmarking: A Gateway to Social Media Literacy?

    I’ve been thinking lately about how people use social tools to filter, process and share all the things relevant to them and their colleagues. Like most systems the three main parts are input, processing & output. (Harold Jarche labels his Seek-Sense-Share and I like the somewhat similar Ask-Learn-Share.)

    Before I get to the question of how you share the valuable things you encounter, I should first ask “Do you share the valuable things you find?” If you’re answer to this is no, why is that? If it’s because you don’t think you have anything valuable to share I’d ask you to reconsider. If it’s valuable to you then odds are somebody else could benefit from it as well. If you don’t share because you don’t know how and/or where I’d like to suggest a couple of ways to get started.

    I think one of the easiest ways to start sharing is to simply move your bookmarks off your computer where only you can see them to one of the social bookmarking sites like Delicious or Diigo. Just stop and think about the things you can discover and learn from having access to the bookmarks of other smart people in your field.

    For example, if you are an elearning developer you will no doubt benefit from seeing what David Anderson is bookmarking. Or even better yet, if you’re an Articulate user you should check out the whole group of people contributing their bookmarks. If you’ve never browsed either of those sites, take a few minutes to surf the tags that interest you. Perhaps elearning, instructional design, performance support or maybe even social business might be a good place for you to start.

    If you like, feel free to look at my bookmarks. They could lead you to super smart people like Jay Cross and Harold Jarche. Or you can look for your own friends.

    I’m confident you’ll discover some valuable resources and more importantly people who share you’re interests. After all that is the most valuable resource of all isn’t it? Connecting with people who share you’re passions.

    Even if you don’t bookmark a ton of stuff, you can still benefit from a social bookmarking website in two ways. First, you’re bookmarks are no longer tied to a particular computer/browser and now they’ll be available to you no matter where you go. Save a bookmark at work during the day and you can still access it from home over the weekend. Secondly, by browsing what other people are saving you’ll be able to find and connect with people who have interests similar to your own.

    As I reflect back, I think social bookmarking was my entry point to being “socially minded”. Which I’m confident is only going to become more valuable to all of us over time, no matter what field you are in.

    So where are you’re bookmarks? Do you think that bookmarking and tagging is a gateway to ‘social’? How do you use them? Would you encourage others to use them?

    What questions do you have? Let me know I’d love to hear from you.