Hey, you, get off of my cloud
Hey, you, get off of my cloud
Don't hang around cause two's a crowd
-Rolling Stones "Get off my cloud"
Our second class this week was on social bookmarking. What's that, you ask? Well, I assure you that I'd never heard of it before class. (I may be getting the hang of blogging, but I've never been one of those people on the leading edge of technology. I mean really, my family did not own a single CD or CD player until about a decade after all music was on CD. My dad kept waiting for digital tape to become the big thing.) Delicious.com is one of the more popular social bookmarking options. (Want a demo? Check out this neat YouTube video.) It allows you to save your bookmarks in "the cloud" and allows others to view things that you've bookmarked. You have heard of life in the cloud, haven't you? It's the concept of storing data on web servers that can be accessed from anywhere, not tied to a particular computer. I think it's a cool concept, and I really like the idea of keeping my bookmarks so that I can get to them from anywhere. The social component of social bookmarking is not that exciting to me, though.
Honestly, that's not how I find cool sites. Mostly, I find interesting sites from other people's blogs. Many blogs have a list of "my fave blogs" or something comparable. A lot of those that I read are medically-related. We "heart moms" are frequent bloggers, and many of those that I follow are friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend's blog. But it was especially comforting early on to read about others' experiences with heart surgeries for their babies and to read success stories.
Beyond that, many of the sites I look at often are people who are in real life friends who blog about their day-to-day stuff. I don't look much at organizational blogs - honestly, I don't care what they're up to (even with my favorite companies and nonprofit orgs). Just not really my thing, I guess. I find lots of interesting articles from Slate.com, and a lot of cool sites I discover the old fashioned way - word of mouth.
How about you? How did you discover my blog? How do you find other interesting sites? What websites do you check regularly?
Posted at 03:25PM Jan 30, 2010 by Jen Foster in General | Comments[2]
I love delicious! I use it all the time, but I use it more for just bookmarking, rather than to find interesting things other people are looking at.
I usually come across blogs through links on friends' blogs. But how did I find your blog...??? Do you ever link to it on Facebook? That must have been it. I think that was probably it.
Posted by Ginger on January 30, 2010 at 08:32 PM EST #
Jen, I also use Delicious. Like Ginger, I also only use it for my personal bookmarks -- I don't use the social aspect. I could see good potential for using it with my students, but, honestly, it's easier just to use Blackboard. Maybe if I taught older students I'd consider it more strongly.
Posted by Amy G. on January 30, 2010 at 10:04 PM EST #