Feedback e-tivity 5

Dear all,

It took me awhile to get this post up because I really wanted to read what you'd written and sort through your bookmarks. The 'bloggingenglish' tag in del.icio.us now has 317 websites. About 90% of them look like very useful websites for learning English - an incredible resource not only for you but for students to come. The related tags are: "english language reference learning writing blog education dictionary grammar blogs". Job well done :-)

Reading your posts, it's clear that you all made very similar comments on the advantages of social bookmarking. These could be grouped into 5 categories: access, community, filter, notes and tagging. Let's see what some of you had to say about each.

Access: "it's accessible from everywhere so that you don't need your PC" (Alessia Ferrara)
Community: "we can also create our personal network of people who share our same interests." (Elisa Caramori)
"Everything is based on reciprocal help. / Personally, I find tagging and describing the site a little time-demanding ( I'm lazy, I know!), but, once you've done, for the others is easier to find what they're looking for. Furthemore, I think that other people too spent some of their time to do the same for me, so I write my description more willingly." (Sara De Tomi)
"When I had a look at the websites my peers found, I realized how useful this technology can be: they stored websites which I didn't found in spite of my three hours long navigating!" (Martina Torresan)
"I think creating a sort of community where you can exchange suggestions for new interesting links with people who has your same interests is the biggest advantage this tool has." (Selena Bortoletti)
Filter: "Another "del.icio.us" surprise from the Web / I think it is an amazing advantage: instead of checking the thousands of pages Google would list (many of which are often completely useless and unsuitable), you limit your search to those websites that have already caught other users' attention. In sum, the best of the best!" (Elena Costa)
"while surfing the Net we're constatly overwhelmed by a huge amount of information, which actually makes it difficult to distinguish between good and bad sources, social bookmarking offers you a way to narrow your search to smaller units of information." (Marta Guarda)
Notes: "By putting a brief description of the site you chose you can let everybody know what it is about and in this way, when you check other people's choices, you know which are worth visiting and which are not." (Giovanna Foschini)
"Thanks to the notes given by the people who previously visited the website, you can have a general idea of the website you're interested in and then decide to log on or simply to quit and try another one." (Elena Boscaro)
Tags: "it enables users to organize their bookmarks by means of informal tags instead of traditional folders! By simply typing a keyword, like blogging, or English for example, you can find the websites of interest to you and cluster them into lists organized by tags…can you really imagine what it means?!" (Silvia Nicolini)
"I like the fact that you have tags and so, when you visit another person's page, you see all the topics he is interested in. This could allow you to extend your research with other linked topics! / Moreover, I could understand some of their interests and what they like. In the future, when we will add other sites, del.icio.us will become a way to know each other!!" (Elisa Rossi)
"I especially appreciate the possibility to organise my bookmarks into folders. Bookmarking on your own computer is undoubtedly useful, but if you save a large amount of sites (as I do) the list becomes messy and in the end it loses most of its aim." (Anna Giabardo)

Was it all good though? No. Some of you made thoughtful, critical comments as well.

The importance of writing notes: "I found irritating that few people write anything about the site's content. I mean, most of the times the title is clear enough to let you know what the website is about, but it doesn't say in details the most interesting characteristics (If there are exercises and their corrections for example!)" (Anna Bordignon)

Who is the del.icio.us community?: "However, I think there are also a drawback, a limit in its use: you cannot know how people value what they have found, I mean, you cannot know according to which criteria a person judges a website as a good or bad one. So, if you must deal with an issue which is of particular interest to you, you should go to Google and filter the options retrieved by yourself and then save them in De.li.cio.us!" (Roberta Fumani)

Maybe it's not all on del.icio.us: "who does make me sure that the websites the users suggest are really the most interesting and that there aren't others more relevant in the whole net, and they don't appear in the list? Who does assure me that the people who suggest the websites are really reliable, in the sense that they could find the most catching website about that specific topic?" (Giovanna Sperotto)

Is it better to do it alone?: "I mean that if you have to do a research or a tesis (such as that we are supposed to be preparing for our final graduation!) on a specific topic, it could be better for you to search, read and analyze all the material by yourself, seeing what you need, what you don't need and what you could put in it but only in the end if you have time and there's space for it. I think that leaning against these new technologies deprive us of this fundamental part of the research, besides our critical attitude." (Giovanna Sperotto)

These are all points that are worth considering and, of course, we should always maintain a critical attitude to anything we do, right?

Finally, I'm really enjoying the interesting, eye-catching titles for your posts that many of you were coming up with. I had never considered that this is a benefit of blogging to: it's great seeing how creative you are getting with the few words in a title. Some from this e-tivity that I particularly appreciated were:

"Simply del.icio.us"
"A way out of the dumpsite"
"...social bookmarking: tag to live, live to tag"

Sarah