Blairframe's List: Rob - Diigo/social bookmarking

• Among the more positive impacts they see: the best students access a greater depth and breadth of information on topics that interest them; students can take advantage of the availability of educational material in engaging multimedia formats; and many become more self-reliant researchers

  • Positive impacts of researching on the internet which can be pulled and saved in social bookmarking sites on Diigo.
• At the same time, these teachers juxtapose these benefits against some emerging concerns.  Specifically, some teachers worry about students’ overdependence on search engines; the difficulty many students have judging the quality of online information; the general level of literacy of today’s students; increasing distractions pulling at students and  poor time management skills; students’ potentially diminished critical thinking capacity; and the ease with which today’s students can borrow from the work of others

  • Negative aspects of using internet researching - does Diigo improve the students ability to refine the information they search for?
    
    It can if the student is sufficiently engaged with the subject.
• Perhaps the greatest impact this group of teachers sees today’s digital environment having on student research habits is the degree to which it has changed the very nature of “research” and what it means to “do research.” Teachers and students alike report that for today’s students, “research” means “Googling.”  As a result, some teachers report that for their students “doing research” has shifted from a relatively slow process of intellectual curiosity and discovery to a fast-paced, short-term exercise aimed at locating just enough information to complete an assignment.

  • Research used to be a slow process of intellectual curiosity, but now it is fast paced and leads to students finding just enough info to make them able to pass an assessment. 
• These perceptions are evident in teachers’ survey responses:  94% of the teachers surveyed say their students are “very likely” to use Google

  • Reliance on one search engine like Google allows a corporation to determine which information is the most relevant but they are biased and have hidden agendas.

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• There are two different groups of folksonomies. There are broad folksonomies which have many users contributing to the creation of tags and narrow folksonomies where only a few users are tagging particular items. A broad folksonomy allows many people to tag the same resources and any user can tag a resource using their own vocabulary. In a narrow folksonomy, only a few people are able to create tags and these tags are used by other users to locate resources. Unlike broad folksonomies, narrow folksonomies are not very common. An example of a broad folksonomy is del.icio.us, this is a website where users can tag any online resource they find relevant with their own personal tags. An example of a narrow folksonomies can be found in systems used by large businesses; these types of folksonomy are mainly used for research and associates working together in collaborative groups

  • Folksonomy is the name for a way of organising info resources created by Social communities.
    
    This is essentially the creation of a new form of language i.e. you have to know which tags(words) to use to retrieve the best results from your search.
    This inturn means you have to be linguistically proficient to get the best out of searching for knowledge held in a community.

• Surprisingly different from the collaborative design nature of the social bookmarking systems, the study finds that our participants, particularly experienced academic users, prefer to create and use their own bookmarks rather than sharing bookmarks created by others

  • This is a good point!
    
    If users of Social bookmarking attach pre-existing tags to the links they find, it helps to increase the value of that Tag, and makes searching using that tag provide more relevant info to other users.
    
    However, Experienced academic users prefer to create and assign their own tags, which may make it easier for them individually to organise and find information in their own Cache, it makes it harder for external users to access their cache of info. THIS COULD BE CALLED SELFISH BOOKMARKING.
• Since an SB website requires users' activities and contributions to maintain its sustainability

  • Like any social site, it needs users activity to maintain its usefulness

• Potentially, social bookmarking is very well aligned with IBL. It requires activeengagement from students to construct and organise their resources. The social aspectmeans that students can be encouraged to engage in both individual and collaborativeresearch. The fact that activities take place in a virtual space using virtual resourcesreduces pressure on material resources. Finally, the ability to share bookmarks, toannotate and (re)organise information, and to comment on each other’s work raises thegenuine possibility for the collective discovery and construction of disciplinaryknowledge by students in collaboration with each other and the tutor.

  • Because bookmarking happens online in a virtual space it can lessen the burden on material resource
    
    Also the ability to comment and reorganise found information makes it possible for students to construct their own knowledge and ideas and share them with peers and their tutors.
• Uncritical student use of the Internet for what are supposed to be academic researchactivities is a familiar bugbear of teaching staff across all disciplines. While manymembers of staff see persistent student use of Wikipedia and Google as a seriousproblem

  • Students use the internet wrongly to find information in the eyes of academics as they are all to willing to accept the results returned by a search engine (which as pointed out by the PageRanking quotes can be manipulated) as gospel. For example, searching for a topic like Football, may present information that is more popular, not actually more relevant or factually accurate.
• Instead of attempting to change behaviour didactically – i.e. by telling students what notto do – it might be more profitable to think about adopting pedagogies which allowstudents to explore digital resources independently, to help them to resolve such issuesindividually and collaboratively with the support of tutors

  • Instead of tackling the subject in a negative manner, we should try to construct learning that allows students to explore social bookmarking's potential.
• a ‘diigo for educators’ account, which enabled me to set up aprivate group for the students enrolled in the two seminar classes. Each of the studentswas given a separate login, which meant that I was able to monitor studentcontributions. Access was restricted to members of the group and the students’ workwas not visible to the rest of the Internet

  • Tutors can sign up for a special educators account which allows them to set up groups and enroll students in the group - they can monitor input from different students - this could be useful in allowing students the freedom to contribute but also allows a certain degree of control and accountability if students misuse the technology.
• The need tolocate articles and sources meant that the students improved their skills in the use ofonline databases and search engines and increased their awareness of where theseresearch tools are located

  • Using the tool meant students where exposed to existing search engines and databases and felt more competent in using them - I myself have been using the OU library with Diigo and it has increased my comfort in using the resource.
• normally the reading for seminars is set for you, whereas we often have to find our own reading for this seminar...I have become much more adept at using JSTORs search functions

  • Instead of lecturers setting texts or readings for lessons or seminars, students can be encourages to find their own text related to key themes, this engages the student in the learning process even before they turn up for the lesson and makes them more involved and engaged with the learning process.
• Other students said that their analytical skills improved:

   

   I think I'm better now at analysing how useful a source might be and how you can use it...it forces you to think about the source material and be analytical in response to it …makes you read the article properly as you have to think about it

  • Evidence that using social bookmarking and being able to highlight and pickout quotes from websites and articles and make notes about them on the page itself helped them to evaluate a sources validity
• The openness and student-led nature of the searching was experienced by the studentsas unusual, interesting and motivating

  • Self direction and freedom led to students being more engaged through a novel approach.
• The fact that the bookmarks were sharedresulted in a perceived economy of effort and greater motivation

  • Sharing made students feel more invested in creating an economy of knowledge, which in turn created sort of a competition to contribute the best information to the economy.

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• What this indicates is the strong relationship between academic journals and recognition.  It is through publishing in well-renowned journals that researchers are likely to gain tenure or promotion and also to be  recognised in their own institution. There is thus a disincentive inherent in scholarly practice to explore new forms of publication,  even when the majority of researchers themselves may support them. This is also related to reputation  and identity. If other forms of output are perceived as frivolous then early stage researchers in particular will be discouraged  from engaging with them. The academic with tenure, however, is often more willing to experiment with new technologies and  forms of dissemination, as their reputation is already established

  • A good point about how scholars are more likely to publish to journals than to share info on the internet. So searching for internet resources might still not give the most valid results and most up to date views.
    
    
    
    So does this mean internet searches are never going to be as good?

• Assessing the usefulness of links

  When searching for information on Diigo there are four strategies you can use to quickly assess the content of a link before you visit the site:

  • Popularity. The wisdom of the crowd dictates that the more popular the bookmark, the more relevant it is likely to be but some sites may turn out to be not exactly what you’re looking for. What’s more, sites may take time to establish as popular and therefore a low number of people bookmarking it might just mean a site is in emergence.
  • Title. If the site has a descriptive title, like the ‘10 Ways Universities Share Information Using Social Media’ example in screenshot 6, then it tells you something meaningful about its content.
  • Tags. You can see the other tags that have been applied to a bookmark. In the ‘10 Ways Universities Share Information Using Social Media’ example, you can see that the tags ‘socialmedia’, ‘education’, ‘universities’, ‘web2.0’ and ‘twitter’ have been used. These may help you to select the sites that are likely to be the most useful.
  • Date. The search results show the date that the site was first saved to Diigo. This date can be useful, particularly if you are seeking information related to a particular event.

  • 4 good points on usefulness
• Perhaps the most significant barrier is that tags applied by an end user will affect the search results. Since the end user may tag an item with whatever tag he or she chooses, this might lead to idiosyncratic categorisation of information, meaningful to a specific user or users but not to all users of Diigo as a whole. This potentially may make it more difficult for users to find information.

  • Idiosyncratic categorisation of info, inventing your own tags may mean good information gets lost because no one knows the tag language to find it

• Social bookmarking with students

   

  When I first taught social bookmarking we jumped straight into using Diigo, a social bookmarking tool, and I soon discovered that the students dumped links irrespective of their quality.

   

  I’ve now learnt that:

   
   
  • Students need explicit instructions and instructions to get the most out of social bookmarking.
   
  • Students must see the point of aggregating bookmarks that they can return to for further use. Don’t expect them to initially appreciate the value of why they should bookmark.
   
  • Students need to be aware of the types of bookmarks they can save. I teach history, so a bookmark could be a link to maps, photos, documents, quotes and so on –it’s like collecting different artifacts online.
   
  • Students need to understand bookmarking is about finding quality links and not quantity.

  • A good quote about how students need to be instructed on how to get the most out of using Social Bookmarking sites

• It is often assumed that social bookmarking websites are similar to the other websites intended for social networking. However, this is not true but rather a misconception. A social bookmarking is called social because it promotes sharing among people but it is not meant for wasting time. Social bookmarking is used to mark or indicate the websites in which you find your desired data and you recommend it to others for the same use. You bookmark the websites so that you can easily use them later. Hence it ensures easy future correspondence with the website and retrieval of the data available online. Thus bookmarking in this way helps you to save your time as you can easily reach the website that you want to visit again. However, this is not the only advantage of social bookmarking. You bookmark the websites and make your bookmarks public. This promotes sharing your recommended links with others. In this way the other people who also want the same data but are unable to find due to a variety of stuff available on the internet, can get them what you desire through your bookmark. In short you optimize the search for them.

  • A useful quote: People using bookmarking sites drive its quality - the links and highlighted info you generate on the site makes it easier for other users to find similar information - "You optimize the search for them" - altruism 
• Social bookmarking was invented as a tool to help people but nowadays many people are making its use to promote their websites by tagging. It is now being used as a search engine optimizer. Just like people make their websites capable enough to appear in the top rankings of the results of search engine, similarly they bookmark their websites in the social bookmarking websites to make them popular. Spamming has also been promoted through social bookmarking which is the negative effect of this service. It is rightly said that everything has both positive and negative impacts. It depends on how we use it. We make the things useful and harmful. We should always ensure appropriate use in order to enjoy the benefits of a service.

  • The tool was invented to help people find and share useful information - but now they are being repurposed (through malicious users or spammers) as a way to promote websites through things like Google PageRank.

• To really understand what is going on with follow vs. no follow links, we need to provide a bit of background about how links work in the realm of SEO. When a site page gets an inbound link, which is a hyperlink pointing to that page, the page gets a small SEO boost. Think of a link as a point, and the more links you have, the more points. More Points = Winning, like Charlie Sheen.

  Google takes note of these points, watching how many inbound links a page has and from what sites. Google figures, hey, if a lot of people are linking to a certain page, it must be a really good page! Let’s give preference in our search engines to that page over others of a similar topic so we can easily deliver the very best pages to our search engine users.

  • This is to do with the Spam element on Social Bookmarking sites. It explains that their are two types of links which can be created on the internet. Follow and No Follow, the Follow link gets attributed a Point on google which helps its PageRanking on their system. The more Points(Links) a website has the higher in the search engine list it appears.
• A no follow link is a link that does not count as a point in the page’s favor, does not boost PageRank, and doesn’t help a page’s placement in the SERPs. No follow links get no love. Theirs is a sad and lonely life.

  • The No Follow Link doesn't get given a point with Google PageRank thus doesnt effect its position in the search engine results list. This stops Spammers from creating links to boost a particular sites PageRank position on google search.
• As we discussed earlier, the natural do follow form of links is used by Google to measure PageRank. More links means more link juice, which results in higher ranking website pages. In its unadulterated state, PageRank exists to see what pages are the most popular (and therefore, likely the best quality pages), and deliver those top pages to searchers. 

  • An assumption made here which may be a good point to argue: Essentially, the more popular something is, the better quality it is. This statement is false, an example of why could be a famous Popstar outselling a respected musicians in record sales, does that mean the popstar is the better musician? No.
    
    This then means students have to determine which sites are popular and which are actually useful.
• The no follow link tag has done a lot of good for the online world – most SEO spammers won’t bother posting irrelevant links to blogs or forum posts if they know they won’t get to publish a follow link.

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• You can set it up so the site sends you a notification for specific tags to let you know when someone on the network creates a bookmark using that same tag. This keeps you completely current on any tag you’re interested in

  • Ability to track a tag to see the most up to date links associated with it
• You can access your bookmarks and all the features of your bookmarking account from any computer that has internet access, giving you complete portability and security—you never have to worry about losing information you have bookmarked.

  • Another plus point - ability to access your bookmarks from any place with the internet

• Another problem that we have been struggling for a long time is spam – spammers have been very aggressive and crafty on our site, harassing users and importing junky content. Spammers are costing us lots of resources not only in hardware, but also in manpower as we spent time developing anti-spam techniques and manually policing the site.  We have decided to take a different approach to this problem by limiting the social privileges of free users.  We now require captcha on many social features, such as following people, joining groups, etc. For a very nominal fee, you can upgrade yourself to “Social Membership,”  which would grant you full social features without capcha, plus a lot of other goodies.  We expect to stop the vast majority of the spammers with this simple measure.

  • Spammers - Diigo installed a new anti spam software onto the site called "Captcha". Also they have changed the membership levels on the site so now the free account which spammers would use now doesnt have a lot of features that allow them to create unworthy content (contributing to the detriment of the resource). Now users are asked to pay a small charge of $5 dollars a year to become 'Social Members' which gives them the same functionality as the original free account.

• The negative feedback could shape the collective wisdom and stabilized the system performance. But in real operations, irrational behaviors from malicious users should be also considered seriously. The simulation experiment assumes most of the users behave reasonably. But for real world website operations, the previous mentioned directions (incentives design, interface design and revealing partial algorithm) could reduce the irrational user behaviors

  • Malicious users (spammers) can effect the collective wisdom that a social bookmarking site promotes

• What is meant by constructivism? The term refers to the idea that learners construct knowledge for themselves---each learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning---as he or she learns.

  • Constructivist learning theory may be helpful to explain how students using Social Bookmarking might learn.

• In social bookmarking, users play the key role. The whole idea is to profit from content created by a large number of users