Communicate and Collaborate Through Social Bookmarking

flickr photo shared by mrkrndvs under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license

One of the challenges when working managing the abundance of knowledge and ideas is how we make sense of it. Although there is a tendency to rely on Google to recall websites, there is something lost when we hand over the curation process to someone else. Some take the first step of saving links to the favourites in the browser. This works, until our computer crashes and we loose all those links. Maybe the answer is to login to the browser to save add-ons and favourites. However, another means is to use various social bookmarking sites to collect and share various links and ideas.

Social bookmarking sites are beneficial as they are stored in the cloud and allow you to store information elsewhere. For some sites it is about links, some it is annotations, others it is images. In addition to this, some allow you to develop curated collections. Here then are some of the options:

DIIGO: An acronym for ‘Digest of Internet Information, Groups, and Other’, Diigo allows you to collect everything from images, texts and links, and organise these using tags, outliners and collaborative groups. Information can be collected in numerous ways, from bookmarklets in the browser, via a personalised email address, through the actual site or using an add-on. For more information, see the following presentation.

DELICIOUS: There are many similarities between Diigo and Delicious in regards to ease in which they allow you collect different ideas and information. However, where they are different is the ability to collaborate within shared spaces, as well as types of media you are able to collect – Delicious is limited to links and comments.

EVERNOTE WEBCLIPPER: Some swear by Evernote. Often this is based on the ease in which you can collect and create your own ideas. Through the add-on and application, you can collect ideas and snippets from across the web and then organise them using notebooks, tags and comments. Like Diigo, you are able to collect a range of media, including images and PDF documents. For more information, see Bec Spink’s introduction.

PINTEREST: A little bit like Evernote, Pinterest allows you to share different ideas in a more visual manner. People who swear by Pinterest often do so based on this visual feel. This though has a downside. Although you can easily find images, it can be a little bit more difficult to find the source of ideas and information. The ease to which you can upload, add and re-pin often limits the use of links to source information, unless it is added within the comments. Here I am reminded of something Alec Couros shared, “If we don’t give attribution, we lose the lineage and travel of ideas. That hurts everyone in a community.”

GOOGLE+: Although more of a social platform, there are many who use communities and categories to curate ideas. See for example Riss Leung’s Makerspace Community. In addition to this, Google recently added Collections. This allows you to group posts by topics. While there are some schools who have used their Google Apps accounts to create different communities throughout the school. For more information, see Heather Bailie’s introduction to connecting with Google+.

There are many other sites, including Scoop It, Educlipper, Livebinder and Symboloo. The reality is that the only way to find which platform works best for you is by tinkering, playing and having a go. So what about you? What is your curation of choice? I’d love to know. Feel free to share in the comments.

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Communicate and Collaborate Through Social Bookmarking by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.