Lesson 4: Social Bookmarking (Think, Explore and Explain)

Lesson 4: Social Bookmarking (Think, Explore and Explain)

Think
1. Before you began this course, what arrangements did you make (or still do) to save your favourite web pages? What provisions do you make to be able to access them whenever and wherever you need them?

Before I began this course (before I came to know delicious), I was actively using the organizer tools in Mozilla Thunderbird, which I can store the web pages according to various categories. Since the Mozilla Thunderbird is basically a email reader, it is extremely useful when I'm writing emails whenever I need to access my favorite web pages. I thought that Mozilla Thunderbird works just like delicious except the fact that they can't share the information I input for the whole network. Since the Mozilla Thunderbird is a email reader, I frequently log in their applications. So, it is relatively easy to remember what kind of information of web pages were stored in the applications.

Explore

Completed all of the steps in the Explore sectio

Explain
1. What are the main skills needed to use Delicious?

From the videos and slideshow of social bookmarking in 'Do', I felt that the users are necessary to have fundamental web 2.0 (probably web 3.0 in the near future) knowledge and skills in order to utilize Delicious. To be more specific, the function of Delicious become quite useful when the users understand the what the social bookmarking is. The social bookmarking have some aspects of sharing, which is the major trend in web 2.0. Since most applications of web 2.0 share the same or similar characteristics as a point of sharing (eg. P2P, flickr, youTube and Delicious), having understandings of web 2.0 is necessary to utilize Delicious functions.

2. What are the affordances of social bookmarking (what does it make possible, what does it impede)?

What does it make possible for sure is that Delicious have perspectives of development. For example, the Delicious functions can be improved by the function of sharing. Therefore, the one of the affordances will be to create more detailed, better functioned categorized web pages. On the other hand, what it can't do is that the perfect (it's difficult to define) fuctions. To be more specific, the Delicious can't collect the suggested homepages by themselves to expand the knowledge of users. Surely, they can be improved by editing with a hand of a lot of people, but they can't suggest homepages according to the categories listed in the Delicious.

3. How can Delicious be used to network professionally and connect you (& other students) to learning resources?

Since Delicious functions can be utilized by categorizing web pages of interests according to the certain categories listed, many users can be connected by following the names of categories. The networking by categories is useful, but it becomes much more useful if Delicious have another ways of gathering people who shares similar interests.

4. What skills and understandings have you learned about social bookmarking that may promote your development as an effective learner in the digital age?

Before I enroll this course, I didn't know what the social bookmarking is. But after I got acquainted with the functions of social bookmarking, I came to understand that the social bookmarking shares the similar possibilities and disadvantages compared to the other web 2.0 tools. Therefore, after I learned the effectiveness of Delicious (Delicious is a really effective tool!), I would like to place an emphasis on the fact that we (users) finally came to the point where we create the next trends of the web such as web 3.0 because the affordances of web 2.0 are virtually the same for many applications.