Managing Multimembership in Social Networks: Oct 27-Nov 9, 2008

Thanks for popping in to help, Cindy! I do have a question about tags. I see when I open a thread and click on "tags" there is a form to create a new tag. Nothing happens when I click the button, but I'm not sure if I did in fact create a tag somewhere and just don't see it.

Is the purpose to identify a word so that you can search on that word as it appears in annotations? Or is it to identify a set of tags that can be used when making annotations. (I'm not explaining this very well! )

Jeffrey asks "Tell me, Sylvia, how do you envision this tool being used to help manage multimembership, as opposed to being now just one more place to look and follow?"

I see the use of the annotation tool here as a possible way to manage our conversation about multimembership (or any other topic). Often we pull out highlights, themes, categories, etc into a wiki during our seminars. I wonder if Marginalia can help us with this knowledge management (not my favourite label) task?

But on a different level, is it interesting to see the notes participants take while reading? It's like borrowing a book from someone you admire and having access to their personal notes in the margins. :-)

Maybe it's like the best of both worlds, individual reflection and group knowledge building.

Jeffrey says, " I highlighted some text, though did not see the notation in the margin. now I just have lighlighted text that I cannot seem to undo."

To be able to make a highlight or an annotation on a forum message, one has to do two things -

1. log in SCoPE using your account. Guest accounts only have view privilege but no edit right.
2. select "My annotation" on the annotation drop-down list located at the upper right of the window.

On the drop-down list you will see other options too. If you see someone's name showed up, it means that person has made some annotation(s). Select the name will show you her annotation(s). You can also select "All annotations" which shows all the public annotations from everyone at the same time.

You are able to delete an annotation or a highlight by clicking on its associated x control button that show on the margin. It is right next to the public/private control button o.

To edit an annotation, you simply click on the annotation itself and then you will be able to change the text.

Hope this is clear.

Cindy

I forgot to mention that currently Marginalia only works in Firefox. If you are using IE you will experience weirdness. This might be Jeffrey's problem.

We are, however, in the process of working to support IE 7.

Heather, I can sure relate to tool fatigue! I just had a quick review of Diigo (I haven't actually tried the annotation tool) and these are the main differences that I noticed:

• Marginalia is designed mainly for reading and annotating forum discussions. Diigo is pretty feature rich -- lots going on there!
  
• Marginalia is more tightly integrated with the forum tool. (I'm not sure if a group of participants could annotate, share, and search by forum as easily in Diigo)
  
• Marginalia doesn't rely on special browser plugins (toolbar), so you can use it from any computer
  

Does that list seem accurate?

Heather, (and a little bit to Jeffrey too), the main reason I used the Marginalia tool was because it was readily available, as in already plugged in, to SCoPE. The annotations are right here where I left them, associated with the conversations. I don't have to take those extra steps of filing retrieving, going back to look up the context etc. I use some other highlighting tools for other applications.

Marginalia is helping me with the reflective aspect of my multimembership and also my facilitating role because tagging themes helps me focus and make sense of the conversation rather than the more casual lurking I sometimes do.

Using application specific filtering tools (the Comments feature in Word is another example) also helps me stay organized.