I have been reading many of my peers' blog reflections and I am a little worried! It saddens me that they have found many of the 'cool tricks' of the internet are not influential enough to want to be sucked into the black hole of digital bliss!
I understand their frustration; I commend their persistence. But I also feel the need to do more than just make individual comments in response. I need to write about how I see this technology.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I use multi-tagging to keep updated with the internet. Multi-tagging, a self-created word, is my definition of how I work when using the web. I open one browser window with multiple tabs. I can then click between them as needed to view the latest "refreshed" versions of the pages. My gmail account is my homepage because I can check email, chat instantly, view the status or peers, and use links embedded in email to visit updates to my various social sites. When I see a link I right click and open the URL in a new tab, so that I can continue what I am reading and view the linked work only as needed. You can also do this mult-tagging with the help of sites like igoogle, but I find there are too many restrictions and I easily loose track of my homepages. By having multiple pages open simultaneously I can move between them or move on to something new faster. For example, during some multi-tagging sessions I pull up the weather. If I had igoogle this is possible, but in the afternoon when I multi-tag I no longer need to know the weather and it is wasting space on the igoogle page. I could reconfigure it, but that takes too much time. I like being in control of what I need to look at.
Another feature that most people new to multi-tagging do not know is the creation of one variation of a username and password. This can be a challenge to come up with at first but a strong and consistent username and password make life easier. I won't go into details here, but if you want more specifics feel free to ask! I have found this to be a time-saving and secure method to navigate all of the memberships I become a part of.
Finally by multi-tagging I embrace the fact that with the internet there is always more that I want to research, investigate, analyze, and just enjoy. I cannot learn everything I want in one sitting. I control my urge to go off on tangents, because those venues will still be there when I need them next week. If they are not, it was not worth your time in the first place. Everyone finds their own niche in the vast folds of the world wide web. I multi-tag so I cover the things I must, skim a few ideas I am interested in, and browse only one new adventure at a time.
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I do appreciate your perspective and your suggestions. Multi-tagging and time limitations are definitely helping me learn all I can from this course while keeping my sanity and a sense of balance in life. My "problem" is that I have a tendency to delve into the details and immerse myself into whatever I am doing. I am beginning to see that this class entails 8 weeks of immersing myself in the web like never before, and then seeing what sticks.
ReplyDeleteKelly, I am so into multi-tagging! Don't know what I'd do without having the possibility of having 5 or more tabs open at once in the same window :) I share your thoughts exactly, especially the last paragraph.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, do you use Delicious or Diigo? I haven't looked into Diigo yet, I think we might later on in the class, but I'm curious if you use either of them and to what extent you've been successful with it.
Actually, I use neither now... I used one for a while a few years ago. However I found that I am too diverse or random in my work to make these sites "useful" as one of my multi-tags. I have tried to go without one for a while; but I would love to hear your insight on your experiences with Delicious!
ReplyDeleteI got the delicious account a few years ago, when it first came about, I was in a professional development one week course and we used it to compile a share links among us classmates. I hadn't touched it again till I started this course. I find it really convenient that I have the "tag" button on the toolbar, and all I need to do when I come accross an interesting link is click on the button and it opens the window for delicious tagging with most of the information for the link already automatically entered (all you do is add the labels/ tags and the description you want for the link).
ReplyDeleteThe main problem I am finding right now with delicious is that I have used a ton of different labels, I think I'm going to reorganize all my links and use less tags (labels) so links are easier to find. You can also create "tag clouds" to make a hierarchy for having subtags, etc. but I yet have to master this... I like the fact that it is so easy to share links with other people through delicious, but I don't think it's not a streamlined enough page... (not half as bad as diigo though which has a million different features, a bit too overwhelming for me). I think I'll try to start a discussion about this on our class page next week, see what people have to say about the different social bookmarking tools.