Week5: Social Bookmarking and Readers

Whe I was first introduced to social bookmarking through Delicious for one of my grad courses, I viewed it as another thing to log into.  Something else to keep track of.  Why couldn't I just use my "favorites"?  I already had a huuuuge list of links saved into my favorites on my desktop at home, and even more on my laptop.  As I went through the course and was introduced to so many web tools and sites, I began to see the NEED for a social bookmarking site.  There were times when I wanted to work on my class away from home, and of course I didn't have my desktop, and my laptop was not available, or the particular site had not been saved on my laptop.  There was a time when I did get a little creative and emailed the links to myself, but that became a little out of hand as well.  I started to have to many emails and I had to dig through the emails to find the right link that I sent to myself.  So, I broke down and setup my first Delicious account.  At first I found it a little confusing.  Not the bookmarking part, but the "Tagging" part. I didn't know what to Tag it as, and how would I remember what I tagged it as to find it later?  I still struggle with this today as part of organizing my links.  But I have to say that this tool has helped me tremendously.  Especially moving through my online grad courses! 

I have recently transferred all of my Delicious bookmarks over to Diigo.  What I have liked about diigo is there are groups and networks that can be formed and joined so you can connect with those with the same interests.  This makes finding resources even easier.  I wish I had more time to search through and connect with more people, there just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day.

Another tool that I have recently been introdued to is "Google Reader".  This has been amazing!  I have been getting more and more into the Blogging world and reading posts and articles that have RSS feeds.  I had been saving the links to the sites (even so much as putting them into my bookmarking account(s)) and clicking the links daily and logging to my blogger account to see if there were any new postings.  This was becoming time consuming.  I would go through all that I was following to find out that half the time there weren't any new posts daily for many of the articles.  Google reader, along with other RSS feed programs makes my life so much easier.  I like google especially because I have many things "housed" there and I only need one account login and password.  (Things are getting out of hand with logins aren't they?)

Overall, with the class I am taking I have found many useful tools.  Some are replacing the old tools that I have been using, and many are making what I am already doing better!

Been a great adventure so far.