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Tags and Tagging: How Do You Create Good Tags?

When it comes down to content classification and findability, "tags" are for many new online publishers still something they have not fully grasped and are often used in ways that are not only less than optimal but often outright useless. Tagging blog posts, news articles or reviews has become a general and widely utilized strategy that allows content to become more easily found, aggregated and distributed in other relevant context.

Tag Cloud of most popular terms on Robin Good's MasterNewMedia home page - created with TagCrowd My simple definition for tags: "Tags are short keywords that define what your online digital content is all about." And here the official one: "A tag is a relevant keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (a picture, a geographic map, a blog entry, a video clip etc.), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification and search of information." (Source: Wikipedia) Most content management systems and blogging platforms now integrate a facility to add tags to any content that is posted online just like most web-based content publishing platforms, from YouTube to Flickr. If such a facility is not directly available in your publishing system it can generally be easily added via a plug-in... just ask on some webmaster forums. So, the issue is not really having a special tool to do this but rather using this functionality in the best possible way. In essence, the art of effective tagging consists in selecting a comprehensive enough set of keywords that organically describes the specific content while offering enough relevant hooks for this to be picked up by user searches. Here more details on how to best craft your article tags:

Tags Overview

A tag helps users find relevant web pages. Tags represent aspects of web pages that are hard to capture with normal query terms in a search. Think of a tag as a simple category name. Tags are read and used by major search engines, social bookmarking and social media sites like Delicious, Flickr, YouTube and even by Gmail to easily categorize, find and aggregate similar content without limiting the user to a pre-determined set of rigid categories. Tags can be manually defined by a news editor, a blogger or by anyone in control of the publishing process on a web site just as much as they can be contributed, edited and refined by the readers / viewers of that same content. On social media sites it is generally the public who defines the relevant tags of any piece of shared content. On web sites and blogs it is instead the author who decides whether to associate tags with his blog posts or not.

"Tag classification, and the concept of connecting sets of tags between web/blog servers, has led to the rise of folksonomy classification over the Internet, the concept of social bookmarking, and other forms of social software. Larger-scale folksonomies tend to address some of the problems of tagging, as astute users of tagging systems will monitor/search the current use of "tag terms" within these systems, and tend to use existing tags in order to easily form connections to related items. In this way, evolving folksonomies define a set of tagging conventions through eventual group consensus, rather than by use of a formalized standard. Although "tagging" is often promoted as an alternative to organization by a hierarchy of categories, more and more online resources seem to use a hybrid system, where items are organized into broad categories, with finer classification distinctions being made by the use of tags." (Source: Wikipedia)

Tags Types

When using tags you need to be thinking of how these tags can become useful "hooks" or effective "labels" so that your content can be found, searched, aggregated and redistributed more easily. The major error that takes place when someone not familiar with tagging prepares content for publication is that it uses either internal category names or other labels that are unique to its publication department or industry to define that information. In reality, what needs to be done is exactly the opposite. You need to associate tags to your content that come as close as possible to the labels that your potential users would use if they had foudn your content and were asked to label it. Although this appears quite simple and clear in this explanation, in practice it is not as easy as it may seem, unless you have exercised yourself at doing it for some time. The best way to approach the selection of tags is to selectively analyze the major classification areas to which your information may belong to. Here some reference guidelines on where to identify such classification areas.

• Content Type

  Is this a review, an aticle, a white paper, a scientific report. Images, maps, catalogs, biographies, interviews, movie_reviews, news, forums, demos, downloads, specifications and product manuals are all examples of possible document types that can be used as tags. These are all excellent labels because it is hard to restrict a search to a specific document type strictly by using search terms. Defining the typology of document with a relevant tag is a good first step in providing a useful label for increasing the findability of this content.



• Subject

  What is the information in your content about? Is it about an online marketing strategy or about a new interface design study? The main key reference topic should always be clearly identified within the tags.



• Source

  Where is this information coming from? Is this material coming from corporations, universities, government, nonprofits? Providing insight into the source of the information published can be a valuable characterizer in many situations.



• Author

  Who has authored this content? Whether you or someone else, the author(s) of any published content can be a very useful defining tag for making the content more accessible.



• Audience

  Any term you can use to complete the following sentence: 'This page is written for ____'. Labels such as 'for_students', 'for_patients', 'for_kids', 'for_lawyers', etc. are very useful as the intended audience is hard to pick up with search query terms.



• Related Products / Services

  Complementary or related product and services which may be very relevant to the main subject of your content. These can be brand or product names that hold a special relationship with your content subject, are mentioned or referenced inside your content one or multiple times.

Tags Testing

How can you tell whether a tag you are considering to add is truly a useful and appropriate one? One easy way to find out is to do the following mental exercise. Ask yourself: if someone went to a major search engine or to a tag engine like Technorati and used the specific tag you are now considering for use to search for content, would they find the content you have associated to that content useful? In other words, if for this article I wanted to associate the tag "content classification" to it, when someone will use this tag to search for content and will find this very article, will this content be relevant? The more you can answer yest to this question, the more likely the tag you have selected is a good one. Obviously, the more generic a tag, and the fewer tags associated to a piece of content, the more difficult to define comprehensively its traits and characteristics. This is why, most professional online publishers typically assign three, four or more tags to any piece of content they publish.

More on Tags

Find out more: Content Tagging: What Are Tags And Why They Are So Important For Web Publishers

• Technorati tags: an introduction
• How Findability Determines Authority Online: The Wikipedia Phenomenon
• Grassroots Cooperative Categorization Of Digital Content Assets: Folksonomies, What They Are, Why They Work

Video Metrics And Analytics For YouTube Clips: YouTube Insight

"Insight turns YouTube into one of the world's largest focus groups." (Source: Google Blog)If you have a YouTube account and you do upload video clips to it you may be interested in knowing that YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload, has been made accessible to all YouTube account holders who upload videos to the site. Official demographics for viewers of the YouTube Robin Good channel - 5-2008 If you had not yet heard about it, YouTube now offers to all of its users a free video metrics and analytics service, which allows you to check traffic trends and statistics of your video clips on YouTube according to a number of variables which include world geographic area and relative popularity of the specific video clip you are interested in. In essence, this new service, called YouTube Insight, gives you access to specific visual stats on the number of views per day your video received, where those viewers are in the world, and how popular your video is compared to other videos in a given period of time.

"For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks."

Here more details and a short introductory video from Google:

Overview

YouTube Insight is a free web-based tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account -- users, partners, and advertisers -- to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload. YouTube Insight gives both publishers and advertisers an inside peek at the viewing trends of their videos on YouTube, and provides them with relevant distribution and delivery information that can help them increase video views and better target their specific audience traits. Just to make a simple example, thanks to YouTube Insight you can now learn how different parts of your distributed identity on the web (via your Blog, Facebook or Twitter presence) is effective in driving traffic to your video content on YouTube. Video publishers could also leverage this opportunity to reach out to form relationships with those sites who consistently point readers to their videos on YouTube. Finally, since advertisers can now access reports detailing the search queries that lead viewers to their videos, they can make more informed decisions about the keywords and bids they select to appear on Google.com.

Key Metrics Offered

YouTube Insight video metrics show most popular videos for Robin Good channel YouTube Insight video metrics show popularity of Robin Good's YouTube channel across different world regions (darker green more popular) Viewing trends of Robin Good's YouTube With YouTube Insight you can also see: 1. How often a video is viewed in different world geographic regions 2. How popular a video is relative to all videos in a market over a period of time 3. How much time it takes for a video to become popular 4. What happens to video views as popularity peaks Some new metrics are also being rolled out now and will soon appear in your YouTube account as well. These include: A discovery tab now shows how viewers found your video, whether by searching on YouTube or Google, browsing under "related videos", receiving a link to the video from an email or website, or watching it in an embedded player away from YouTube. In this view you can also see a search results breakdown for YouTube and Google search queries that led to your video, as well as for the external websites driving traffic to your content. (Insight will show up to 50 inbound links.) (You can find these new metrics under the "Discovery" tab within the Insight dashboard. Click on the "Insight" button under "Account > My Videos." )

Benefits of Using YouTube Insight

By using the YouTube Insight data, you can learn more about what works and what doesn't by doing a number of tests. Now that you have precise and detailed access to this data, you can gauge a lot better what factors may be influencing the most your successful videos. By studying your video traffic trrends you may also learn a great deal about which days and times may be most appropriate for posting or releasing your new clips. Though you may think this may have a marginal value, when you add up all of this factor and you plan for a strategic video viral campaign, each and every one of this factors has some tangible importance. By knowing more you can better customize your video content, packaging and delivery to address the specific traits of your target audiences.

Where Do I See These Statistics on my YouTube Account?

Go to your "My Videos" page and then you will see an "Insight" button next to each one of your video clips.
Next to each one of your video clips you will find an extra button labeled "Insight", just like the one I am pointing at with my cursor here below:
By clicking on it you get to access the statistics for that specific video in a screen like this one: To go and see all of your YouTube viewing trends you can also click first on your "Account" link. Once you are on your Account page scroll down to the bottom where you will see on the left a link to YouTube Insight. Here is a screenshot:
More information: YouTube Reveals Video Analytics Tool For All Users

Online Advertising Trends Show Small Sites Holding Up Well Against Economic Slowdown: The PubMatic AdPrice Index

Online advertising trends show that only savvy and well-focused small web publishers are making the best out of an overall decline in ad pricing due to a significant slowdown in the US economy. Before what is already impacting large and medium-sized web sites can affect your site too, it is good to look at the specific data emerging from these statistics while looking at the possible strategic ways out. PubMatic, a unique online service that automates and optimizes ad inventory decision-making for Web publishers, just released its second monthly PubMatic AdPrice Index, an industry-wide measure of online ad network pricing for publishers. The index shows clearly the impact of the raising economic slowdown in the U.S. on the online advertising industry, with, - check this out - overall monetization dropping by a chunky 23 percent. The PubMatic AdPrice Index reveals surprising weakness in monetization for the vast majority of Web sites. Interestingly large Web sites fared the worst while small Web sites managed to maintain their monetization rates. eCPMs for large Web sites (more than 100 million page views per month) dropped dramatically by 52 percent from 38 cents in March to 18 cents April. Medium Web sites (1 million to 100 million page views per month) were nearly flat, with monetization dropping from 34 cents in March to 33 cents in April. Small Web sites managed to improve their monetization, increasing from $1.18 in March to $1.29 in April. What is critical for any serious web publisher at this point, is to look more objectively at the traffic and monetization stats of the last 2-3 months, and where the trend is not a clearly positive one, to seriously consider all or some of the three strategic solutions suggested in this report. The information collected and used in the PubMatic AdPrice Index is based on data from over 3,000 publishers and billions of ad impressions. Here more details: PubMatic Co-founder and General Manager Rajeev Goel explains the PubMatic AdPrice Index

PubMatic AdPrice Index

May 13, 2008

Key Findings

• On average, Web site monetization dropped by 23 percent from 49 cents in March to 38 cents in April. Pricing data reflects net publisher monetization via ad networks and excludes ad networks' share of ad spends as well as inventory sold directly by publishers to ad agencies or advertisers.


• eCPMs dropped significantly in most categories and verticals. However, small Web sites, consistent with earlier findings, continued to outperform medium and large Web sites.


• In April, average eCPMs dropped 52 percent for large Web sites (to $0.18) and 2 percent for medium sites (to $0.33). Conversely, small niche Web sites saw a 10 percent increase (to $1.29).


• Social networking sites lead the plunge among verticals, with monetization dropping 47 percent, from $0.37 in March to $0.19 in April, below January lows of $0.22.


• Entertainment site monetization dropped 17 percent from $0.40 in March to $0.33 in April. Gaming and Sports sites were down marginally (4 percent and 5 percent, respectively). Technology remained relatively flat at $0.83 in April vs. $0.82 in March, but is still off January highs of $0.92.


• 77 percent of small Web sites garnered net publisher eCPMs from ad networks of under $1.00, compared with 95 percent of medium Web sites and 100 percent of Large web sites.
  
• Across all Web sites, the range of eCPMs was $0.002 to $18.45.

To combat the drop in monetization, many publishers are adopting best practices to maintain or grow their Web site revenues. These best practices include:

1) Network diversification

Working with multiple ad networks (as opposed to one or two) to find the right mix of optimum advertising campaigns.

2) Monetizing international traffic

Working with foreign-based ad networks to better monetize international site visitors. While international traffic is often a minority of a publisher's traffic volume, this traffic can be highly lucrative because of the weak U.S. dollar and the growth environment outside of the US.

3) Segmentation strategy

Segmenting a Web site into various categories (finance, travel, lifestyle) and using different ad tags for each category. Most ad networks are better able to target relevant campaigns to a Web site's inventory as a result.

Reference

Methodology • The PubMatic AdPrice Index is a broad-based measure of ad network pricing information based on anonymous data from over 3,000 publishers who work with PubMatic for ad network and ad layout optimization services. Approximately 85% of these publishers are based in the US. • The pricing data reflects the pricing of text and banner inventory sold to ad networks only, and does not include inventory sold directly to advertisers • The pricing data reflects net publisher monetization, not gross advertising spend or the money paid by the advertiser to an ad network
Segment Definitions • Small Web site segment: Less than 1 million page views per month. • Medium Web site segment: Between 1 million and 100 million page views per month. • Large Web site segment: Over 100 million page views per month. • Aggregate Index: Data for All Web sites is computed using a weighting of 65% large Web sites, 20% medium Web sites, and 15% small Web sites based on an estimate of overall traffic in the online publishing market. Note: The pricing data reflects net publisher monetization via ad networks and excludes ad networks' share of ad spends as well as inventory sold directly by publishers to ad agencies or advertisers.
The PubMatic AdPrice Index has been prepared by: Albert Madansky, Ph.D., H.G.B. Alexander Professor Emeritus of Business Administration at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and recipient of the 2005 American Statistical Association Founders Award Michele Madansky, Ph.D., media and market research consultant, former VP of Global Market Research for Yahoo! You can also subscribe to the monthly updates of the PubMatic AdPrice Index by going to www.adpriceindex.com and registering your email address.

Online Collaboration Tools - New Technologies And Web Services - Sharewood Picnic May13 08

Online collaboration tools keep coming up with new and further improved features and facilities and with zero barriers to entry for newcomers. What could you ask more? Photo credit: Natalia Lukiyanova What was only a year ago reserved for those who knew a specific tool or had the money to pay for the market leader is now available from multiple brands and in most cases for free. Collaboration tools are indeed becoming the bread and butter of any effective distributed team. Here, the latest screen-sharing, collaborative word-processing, VoIP, and file sharing tools you can start using right now. Here the online collaboration tools I have selected for you this week:

1. SkyFex: Screen sharing and remote control free online application lets you collaborate online
2. File Qube: File sharing service lets you 2GB create folders with files up to 500MB each
3. Zloop: Create online communities to communicate, organize and share files with your team
4. Qlubb: Create groups and invite people to share calendars, pictures and messages in real-time
5. FlashPhone: Make free calls worldwide to any phone for up to three minutes
6. Adobe Buzzword: Online word processor lets you create, edit, and share text documents online
7. Drop.io: Upload and share any type of file through a personalized URL
8. Gabtastik: Multi-protocol instant messenger for Mac OS X platforms

1. SkyFex SkyFex is a free browser-based screen sharing and remote control application that anyone can use to give/get assistance with her computer. If you are the expert who is going to give assistance, you just have to sign up for the service for free, and install a small plug-in. You will then be provided with a six-digits code to give to the other person, who will just have to paste it in his browser, and click a button. Your PCs will be then connected for remote assistance, for free. http://skyfex.com/



2. File Qube File Qube is a file sharing service that anyone can use to share any type of file. Depending if you are registered or not, you can send files up to 500MB and have your personal 2GB space where you can create folders and upload any file in them that you can then share with a public link. Else, if not registered, you can share files up to 150MB, that will be automatically deleted after 30 days. In both cases the service is free to use. http://www.fileqube.com/



3. Zloop Zloop in a collaboration software for creating online communities of people called loops. You can create unlimited loops for an unlimited number of people, where members can interact with each other by organizing projects, sharing files, and having conversation with anyone else, or in one-to-one mode. The service is completely free to use after a simple registration. http://zloop.com/



4. Qlubb Qlubb is an online group networking and communication tool that allows you to create groups and invite as many people as you want to join you. Group members can share any type of information with each other such as schedules, upcoming events, photos, and calendars. Users can also communicate via private and public real-time messages. Qlubb is free to use after you register. http://www.qlubb.com/



5. FlashPhone Flashphone is a free-of-charge web service which allows you to make free calls from a web browser. To use Flashphone you just need to have a computer with access to the Internet, a microphone, and Adobe Flash Player 9 or above installed. Just insert the number you wish to call and you will be connected to the number for up to 3 minutes per call. You can use Flashphone on Pocket PC devices too if you download and install Adobe Flash Player 7 for Pocket PC. Free. http://www.flashphone.ru/en/main



6. Adobe Buzzword Buzzword is a new Flash-based word document processor. Buzzword allows you to create, edit, or view any type of text document online, with no software to install (apart from the Flash plug-in). It has many of the features of Microsoft's own processor, and it enables you to export you documents as Microsoft Word (.doc), Office 2003 xml or RTF files. You can also share your documents letting people review, correct, or simply view your work. Free to use. http://preview.getbuzzword.com/



7. Drop.io Drop.io is a web-based service for uploading and sharing any type of file, up to 100MB. It is really intuitive and easy to use: just add the files you want to upload, type a personalized URL, add an optional password, select the expiration type, and click drop. Anyone who will be provided with the URL will be able to get the files without sending any email attachment or making long file transfers. Free to use, with no registration required. http://drop.io/



8. Gabtastik Gabtastik is a multi-protocol instant messenger for Mac platforms that uses minimal system memory and leaves the screen clean with its customizable window opacity. It supports GoogleTalk, Facebook chat and Meebo, which means that you can log on services like AIM, Yahoo, and MSN as well. Gabtastik requires Mac OS X to run, and is free to download and use. http://www.gabtastik.com/Gabtastik.html

Originally written by Nico Canali De Rossi for Master New Media and first published on May 12th 2008 as "Online Collaboration Technologies - New Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Picnic May13 08"

Visual Communication And Video Publishing - Selected Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Picnic May12 08

Here's the visual communication and video publishing tools weekly bazaar. Today, I have selected for you tools and services to create slideshows with your Flickr images, to extract color schemes from any picture, and also to download and auto-convert videos directly from YouTube. Check it out! Photo credit: Argus456 Here my favorite visual communication and video publishing for this week:

1. Slideoo: Create an animated embeddable slideshow with Flickr pictures in a matter of seconds
2. SnapaShop: Small Windows software lets you capture regions of your screen in five different formats
3. Flickriver: Make a research through Flickr, and get the results on an infinite page that grows while you scroll
4. Color Palette Generator: Past an image URL and extract a color scheme from any picture
5. Super Screenshot: Take screenshots of any website, choose size and quality, and download it to your machine
6. Polaroid-o-Nizer: Provide an image URL and add a Polaroid look to it automatically
7. LogoEase: Create logos with no image editing skills and export your creation in various formats
8. TubeSucker: Watch, save for further watching, download and convert YouTube videos

Visual Communication Tools

1. Slideoo Slideoo is a web-based tool that you can use to create simple slideshows with Flick pictures. To create a slideshow simply enter a Flickr username, pick the whole photostream or select the image set you wish to use, customize the width, image size, and number of pictures: Slideoo will then provide you with an embedding code for your blog or website. Free to use with no registration needed. http://www.slideoo.com/



2. SnapaShop SnapaShop is the smallest free screen capturing system out there on the web. In fact, this small application can be downloaded for free and, just by running the 68kb .exe file, you can run the application and take screenshots of any part of your screen by resizing the window and clicking save. You can then export the picture in five different formats. Free to download and use. http://www.nicekit.com/...



3. Flickriver Flickriver is a Flickr images search engine, that enables you to look for images inside Flicks, and browse them easily. After you search for a word, basing onusername, group, tags, or keywords, Flickriver generates an infinite-growing page that avoids the need of clicking "next" to browse pictures: the more you scroll, the more images will appear. Free to use. http://www.flickriver.com/



4. Color Palette Generator Color Palette Generator is an online color scheme generator, that lets you get the color scheme out of any image. After you paste an image's URL and click a button, it automatically displays the image and provides you with 2 color combinations (dull and vibrant),extracted from the image itself. Plus, it also shows the HTML color values for an easier exporting operation. Free. http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/



5. Super Screenshot Super Screenshot is an online service that takes screenshots of any website. All you need to do is paste the URL into the box and click a button: you can then refresh the screenshot, decide dimensions and size of the picture, and also set the format between JPG and PNG before right clicking the image and saving it locally. The service is completely free to use. http://www.superscreenshot.com/



6. LogoEase LogoEase is a web service that allows you to create logos for free. It lets you create logos easily with no image editing skills and, if you are totally out of ideas, you can start editing logos that other people had come out with. When you are satisfied, you can export your logo in high resolution image format - EPS, PNG, JPG and TIFF. LogoEase is free to use, registration required. http://www.logoease.com/



7. Polaroid-o-Nizer Polaroid-o-Nizer is a free web-based application that allows you to add a Polaroid-look to your images. It is really easy to use: you just have to pick a background color, provide an image URL, decide the position and angle of the image, and you're done. Your new Polaroid-looking picture will appear, ready for download. Free to use. No registration needed. http://polaroid.cuteness.ws/





Video Publishing Tools




8. TubeSucker TubeSucker is a free YouTube player and video downloader that runs on Windows machines. After you install the software, you can search videos right from within the program, save them for further watching, and also download them with a single click: you can download all of the videos that you find, with the possibility of batch converting them in MP4, AVI ,MOV, MP3, and WAV formats. The software if free to download and use. http://www.newrad.com/software/tubesucker/

Originally written by Nico Canali De Rossi for Master New Media and first published on May 11th 2008 as "Visual Communication And Video Publishing - Selected Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Picnic May11 08"

Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media: An Opinionated Digest by George Siemens - May. 11 08

From social media to personal networks, all new media and technologies play an increasingly important role in how we understand and handle our increasingly complex lives. Media, news, video games, communication theory, philosophy, and other areas contribute to my understanding of the role of technology for learning. But learning is not confined to colleges and universities. For those in the forefront, the ability to form networks has now become nearly vital for achieving personal and career goals. Photo credit: http://www.nelshael.com/ophelia">Lars Christensen Nonetheless we often say that we do not have the time required to invest in social media and their related activities our ability to share and to form social networks will be increasingly vital to achieve your personal and career goals. E-learning technologies scholar, researcher and guru, George Siemens, takes you into this weekly exploration of stories, resources and research data to better understand how media and technologies influence, expand and revolutionize the way we work, learn and evolve new ways of co-operating intelligently.

eLearning Strategy

On Monday (May 12), we will begin our online conference: Shaping our future: Toward a Pan-Canadian elearning research agenda. Terry Anderson is the first presenter and will be presenting on The value, form, and function of a large scale research agenda. All sessions can be accessed here. Discussion during the conference (and more information on schedule, themes, etc) will be held here. If you're interested in attending our Monday presentation, please review how the scheduled time translates into your time zone.

Networking for Your Career

I spend most of my time looking at networks from the perspective of learners and educators. I find my own personal network for learning far exceeds any other information source (including Google). As I begin to follow/read different practitioners and theorists, I begin to develop in my own understanding - especially if they represent a related, but not overly similar field. Media, news, video games, communication theory, philosophy, and other areas contribute to my understanding of the role of technology for learning. But learning is not confined to colleges and universities. As this article states, the ability to form networks is vital for achieving personal and career goals. When I suggest how important personal learning networks are, I often encounter the statement "I don't have time". As this author, Herminia Ibarra, states: "If you want to succeed you need to make the time". She then goes on to suggest that we need to schedule time for forming networks so that it becomes habitual. I wonder how many educators regularly set aside time to consider the quality and diversity of their networks...

Twitter

A short exploration of Twitter as a tool for reporting, filtering information, and consuming (much) time. A particular focus in the article is the use of twitter for finding information. I frequently see educators posting requests on Twitter...and the network replying with a great list of resources, often within minutes. Email lists no longer exhibit this spirit of sharing. It might be due to email fatigue and the fact that most of us see email as a burden, not an opportunity for helping others. With Twitter, the spirit of sharing and assistance remains strong. At least until network fatigue kicks in...

Walking Uncertain Paths: Technologies and Models of Learning for Tomorrow

During this last week, at MADLaT, Peter Tittenberger and I presented several sessions. The first was a workshop addressing approaches educators need to consider as they move content online. The second session - Walking Uncertain Paths: Technologies and models of learning for tomorrow - was focus on where we are heading with educational technology, as technology both influences and reflects existing mindsets within society. I enjoyed both sessions as most of the time was spent in conversation rather than presentation. At one point, as a group of educators were addressing some of the change pressures they face, I asked about the key question guiding their technology plan: Is the question one of should we use technology or one of how should we use technology? Everyone in attendance stated technology use was a foregone conclusion. The only question they were grappling with was how to make it work. Not sure how I feel about that. A few good cynics are always nice to have around :).

Social Networks Around the World

This is a bit dated (from last year, which is a condition of obsolescence in online tools and applications) but still useful to consider how social network sites are positioned around the world. I'm interested in how countries not yet dominant in social networking, but possessing large populations, will influence maps like this. Will sites like Facebook and Myspace be able to successfully internationalize? Or will companies such as South Korea's Cyworld serve their own markets more effectively?

What Do We Do with Computers?

RescueTime is a tool that tracks what a user does with her/his computer. I tried it for a while. It was depressing, so I stopped using it. They've now publicized some aggregate information on computing habits of early adopters. The results are not surprising - most people still spend the bulk of their time in Microsoft-based applications. Google is coming on strong, however, with their email service approaching Outlook in terms of usage time. Google Reader rated quite highly as well for early adopters, almost on par with time spent in Google search.

Facebook

Identity is challenging in a distributed environment. When dealing with educators, I often mention that if they are not involved in networked conversation, their voice essentially doesn't exist (which raises the prospect that learners will receive information from less than ideal sources). Well, in reality, if you're not online, it's not only that you don't exist. Instead, the challenge arises that others may form your identity for you. For example, in a neighboring city of Brandon, Manitoba, a teenager has been charged with impersonating a teacher for creating a Facebook account using the teachers name and identity. While I see the parallel with impersonating a person in a physical space (and therefore the basis of the arrest), these types of things are almost impossible to control. The onus of confirming identity - much like email spam - should rest on the people interacting with the Facebook profile. I have become cynical over the last few years about people offering me huge sums of money if I will only provide my personal banking information. In a similar sense, when I encounter an individual online, I need to question/be wary. As astonishing as it may appear, not everything we encounter online is completely accurate.

Leading Learning

I presented at the Leading Learning conference this morning...presentation slides are here: On Becoming: cognitive and social impact of technology. My focus was on retaining the needed elements of education - transforming learner and society, deep understanding, cultivating capacity for ethical thought, and emphasizing "what it means to be human" - while fostering greater innovation in teaching and learning through the opportunities of technology. It's a tough balance to get right.



Originally written by George Siemens and published as weekly email digest on eLearning Resources and News. First published on May 10th 2008. To learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".