3 Ways to WORDLE Share

Interested in learning more or sharing your WORDLES? Now, you can access the Diigo WORDLE Group.

Haven't used Diigo, the social bookmarking site? Now would be a great time to join.

While you're at it, consider joining the Diigo for Educators site that is protected, so you can use it with your students.

Here are webslide show of many of our group's bookmarks, to date.

WORDLE: A Practical Application

WORDLE has a function that allows users to submit any del.icio.us user name to make a non-linguistic representation of bookmark tags. You can analyze the use of various tags within your bookmarks and look for areas of great emphasis, synonymous tags or areas of little emphasis. Each of these areas of analysis can drive future teaching and writing related to your professional development plan and the school's curriculum map.

I created my delicious WORDLE that could be used formative assessment, summative assessment or self-assessment by analyzing this snapshot from November 10, 2007 of n2teaching delicious bookmarks

Here is another version of the same set of bookmarks on the same day that contains more words. Controlling the number of total words is an aspect of WORDLE that you can change within the layout function. Hopefully, these ideas will lead you to think of more ways to use WORDLE as an interactive tool, not just a toy.

Part of the Cleanup Crew

Periodically, I join the virtual cleanup crew, and we organize my various online homes and storage units. Today, I worked with del.icio.us to pull together some related articles.

How do I cleanup the data tags? I find or create ONE data tag that relates to all MY bookmarks I want to group. I do this in a similar way I organize my kitchen cabinets to make MY life more effective and creative.

By synchronizing related data tags, I also speed up work flow.

Previously, I discussed the importance of appropriate data tags. I want to explain my thinking about finding a common factor, a data tag, that can synchronize all bookmarks that I will want to access later....when I need them, as a unit.

Initially, while I bookmark resources, I try to use as many data tag synonyms I can think of AT THAT MOMENT of bookmarking. In del.icio.us, I use the data tag cloud, ordered alphabetically, to find related data tags. The size variation tells me the number of times that I used a particular data tag.

As always, I agree that you may use any bookmark organizational tool, yet I am suggesting one way to organize your bookmarks that I developed over several years of datamining. Try this method. From here, you will most likely adapt an organizational style that works best for you.

Later, after searching for synonyms among my data tag cloud in del.icio.us, I will examine a particular set of bookmarks that are tagged with the current topic of focus. For instance, the data tags cyberspace and virtual world are synonymous with one another, but I don't know that all my bookmarks with the tag cyberspace are also tagged virtual world.

Since virtual world seems to be gaining momentum as the most used synonym referring to interactive, online, social networks, I will add that data tag to all bookmarks that contain the cyberspace tag.

All I hope to achieve is to find related bookmarks about my current topic of interest. That is why I frequently join the cleanup crew to run organizational tests on my data tags of interest. This process is now easily accomplished. Afterwards, I can access all my del.icio.us bookmarks on a topic of interest when I need them.

Try this technique. I think you will find it very effective. Remember, you will want to focus on a FEW topics each time you join the cleanup crew. I suggest that you will be more effective if you don't try to cleanup the whole del.icio.us storage file at once. Over a period of time, you will find clarity within your bookmark topics. In all probability, you will increase your overall productivity within the area of accessing the resources you want.

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Beginning Uses for del.icio.us - Collaboration

Here are some suggestions for teachers or cohorts beginning to develop their online skills for themselves and in their teaching.

A great place to start in the process of learning to collaborate online is through the use of del.icio.us, a simple, yet powerful bookmarking addon. Teachers don't have a great amount of free time and they don't have secretaries, so I believe that any technology they use must be effective, easy to use, and not get in the way of the work they want to accomplish. It seems to me that del.icio.us meets those criteria.

If you decide to use del.icio.us, I would like to suggest that eventually each teacher may want to make one login name for school and one for home or personal use. This is very easy to do because of the way del.icio.us works.

There are several other great reasons to use this web based system:
1. This is not just for bookmarking. People can write a blurb about the webpage, Some teachers will remember this as the hotlist.

2. You have a network as large as ALL of del.icio.us, or as small as you want. For instance, when you tag some site on del.icio.us, you can see the comments of others.
a) If you want, you can follow that person.'s tags If you both have looked at each others hotlists, bookmarks, tagged sites, whatever you want to call them....then you make a MUTUAL connection....these people are your fans and you are their fan.
b) this networking capability will allow teachers to send tags to their colleagues or their own personal login through their fan list without having to log in and out under different names. IT SAVES TIME and it's easy to do. You just click on the names that are listed in your network, and the tag is sent to every other person or login you marked.

3. Any tag can be marked NOT SHARED, then no one but you can see it.

4. Del.icio.us is very straightforward and has been around for quite some time, so there are more resources to collect than with other sites of its category.

5. You can easily install addons with small icons for del.icio.us on both Firefox and IE7.

6. One of the very best functions of del.icio.us is the ability to receive tags from anyone in your network. Even though I may not bookmark every item sent to me, I appreciate the conviviality and collaborative context of this function. I think it is really cool, to open your del.icio.us page and see that someone has sent you some tags. **This could really be of practical benefit to you as the tech integration mentor....you can send tags to the teachers in your collaborative group.

While I use several similar software addons like del.icio.us, I believe it meets your criteria for ease of introduction, clean visual space that prevents confusion, and flexibilty for use among your group of teachers. I believe it is the best addon environment where beginners and experienced, first adopters can collaborate.