Simple Subject Sunday: Weed the Garden!

Colorful Garden by Hamed Saber
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How often do you read through your archives? How do you check for broken links? Do you edit your tags? If you caught a grammatical error in a blog posting from your archives, would you fix it?

These are all pertinent questions to think about when you write a blog that you hope people will follow. Weed the Garden if you want to keep it looking good. If your links are dead, your article loses some of its meaning. I recommend checking archives, but I know that is time consuming.

Here is what I do: When I'm writing an article about a particular topic that's related to early works, I check out the links in the archived article BEFORE I include a link in the new article. This is a great way to find dead links. It's surprising how many websites change their actual names for their web pages.

Checking this links is very important for another reason. It is the way that you cite your sources, so it's critical to keep these citations current.

I wish there were some dynamic agent or web app that could check links, but I don't know of one. Do you? If so, it would be wonderful if you would share it here.

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.