Resource Gathering: Revisited

How are you looking for, and organizing your resources? Are you going to Google, Digg, Diigo, Delicious, or other products. Why not try another resource that will pull in from all of these sites to bring you all the resources at once. Try Thought Ark to perform your searches to gather in information from all of your sources. Once you have completed your searches you can then take the results an create your citations and apply to your research and projects.

Some of the features that are available from Thought Ark are:

• Store and share collection of saved bibliographic searches.
• Value resources based on usage
• Paper writing and citing interface
• Paper publishing
• Comments on resources and published papers

Developed by a team comprised of students from Purdue University's TLT department along with Dr. Sonrin Matei, Thought Ark is an open source "free" utility to allows you to determine bibliographic resources through a collaborative space that also gives you the ability to identify resources you search for and those of others whose searches are similar and provide you the opportunity to utilize their results.

Now some unfortunate news, even though you can go directly to the site and use it just like any other search engine, you have to create a login to store your search results and to use some of the advanced features of the site. Once you create your login, I would suggest making it something that you are use to, then you have the ability to save and share resources, as well as to create Classes and Papers that you post onto the site.

Socialbookmarking

I was talking with Angie this week about socialbookmarking with Delicious. She was preparing to attend a workshop on Delicious, and I was trying to explain why I've enjoyed socialbookmarking and how it's helped me out. And I thought, "There's my blog for this week."

There are many tutorials and videos that do a very good job of explaining socialbookmarking, and sites like Delicious and similar sites like Diigo, so I'm going to stick to three ways I think socialbookmarking, and specifically Delicious, can be a valuable tool.

• Web-based Access- I've blogged about cloud computing and its benefits. Delicious is "cloudbookmarking." If you bookmark a site locally on a computer, you can't access it from other computers, and if the harddrive crashes your bookmarks are lost. A few years ago I had an excel spreadsheet with many links I would carry around on a flash drive-which I would often misplace. I needed an option that allowed better access to my bookmarks. Delicious allows access from any computer (or device) connected to the Internet.
• My Network- Socialbookmarking is allows me to access other user's bookmarks and gives them access to mine. It's not really "social" for me; it's more about having a "network" to connect with and benefit from their ideas. This all feeds the idea of having your own personal learning network. Want to pick the brain of colleagues or pioneers in a field? Delicious is a great way to do it. Check out Marlo's links regarding copyright. Look what Wes Fryar has on Internet safety. How about my links tagged "antivirus," which I have sent to several friends who needed help with their home computers. Your network can be a great tool for finding relevant information on the Internet and pulling or pushing links out to others.
• Exploration & Search Tool- Although it is unlikely to replace your favorite search engine, Delicious can deliver a look at what all users are tagging. I've occasionally found good links from the main page (which lists the "most popular bookmarks on Delicious" at the time) or by searching tags. It is important to note that although I've not seen sites I would consider inappropriate, the searches may yield results that could be blocked by web filters or just might be like searching for the needle in the haystack. Sometimes you have to have some time to search to find resources.

If you are interested in socialbookmarking, there is a workshop offered by our department, or you can take a look around at delicious.com.

Bookmarking Revisited

You may have heard of Delicious or StumbleUpon and maybe even Diigo. Each has their own strengths and ease of use as Social Bookmarking sites. Well I found another one that you may or may not have heard about.

It is called trailfire and what it does is to not only allow you to create bookmarks to resources, utilities and your own personal interests but also strings them together to make a trail. "Find what you want on the web in an entirely new way. Follow trails of web pages and discover new ideas, hot topics, reviews... "

Each resource becomes its own trail. You could have students create trails as part of their senior projects so that the resources they use are more manageable. The good thing is that they have the ability to share those resources with you and everyone else. All they have to do is share the created short web link made by trailfire.

The trailfire site is easy to understand and takes only a couple of minutes to set up from logging in to creating your first trail. Downside, folks you have to create another user name and password, I know but if you follow a standard login name and password then it will be easy to remember. One you have registered you download the plug ins for your Internet browser window. In its current version it looks as if it only supports IE browsers. Now all you have to do is three little steps to create your first trail.
Step 1. Click n the trailfire logo in your browser
Step 2. Give your trail a heading title (basically a tag)
Step 3. Save the trail

This can eliminate a lot of lost productivity for your students when they are searching for resources. As well if combined with other utilities, like netTrekker, they could also eliminate extraneous non-educational sites and only look at valid educational material.

Stickies on the Web

Ever look at your Bookmarks or Favorites list and wonder why you took the time to mark that particular site.

For those of us who need little reminders or just love Sticky Notes, MyStickies is a web-based application that allows you to add a sticky note to any web page. When you revisit the page, the note is right where you left it. This makes it easy to remember why you marked the page in the first place and what was important on it.

Included with the MyStickies account is an area where you can go to review your notes, go back to "stickied" sites, modify text in a note, and delete unwanted notes. For the people who want to remember why they chose that site but don't care for the "Sticky Note Effect," each account has an unlimited number of Sticky Pages that act as a scratch pad, allowing you to make your notes, lists, or reminders in one spot and not clutter up your web page. Tags or categories can be added to each sticky note and then viewed later by category.

The future of MyStickies for me is to share tags, notes, and sites with all my friends - and remember why!

Cocoalicious

During my Internet wanderings stumbled across Cocoalicious, a desktop bookmarking application that you can use to access your de.icio.us bookmarks. It's an Open Source de.icio.us client for Mac OS X users. You can use Cocoalicious for posting links to your del.icio.us account and browsing through your del.icio.us library outside of your browser. Since this application is on the desktop, there is an automatic local backup of your del.icio.us bookmarks.

Cocoalicious displays favicons for each site in the main post list as illustrated above. Icons are automatically downloaded for each new post and are refreshed every time the bookmark is viewed.

Excited about trying Cocoalicious and giving it a whirl.

Thumblicio.us

Thumblicio.us is a web2.0 tool that displays thumbnails of the most popular del.icio.us sites. Visually you can then browse screenshots of new and interesting sites from del.icio.us before clicking on a hyperlink.

Visit my del.icio.us bookmarks at http://del.icio.us/adhodges.