I am required by my district to moderate student blogs. We are forced to use district blogging servers and software. It requires that student blogs be sponsered by a teacher, who must moderate the posts. We are emailed the posts automatically and they do not appear until we give them approval. I am in a K-12 school system, so understand why the powers that be are afraid of liability and other problems like bullying. That said, I wish we were allowed to watch things more informally, by just subscribing to the blogs and reading the posts. Little freedom to make mistakes means little freedom to learn.
Cynthia Alvarado
Posts made by Cynthia Alvarado
Tagging works differently at different sites. For example, spaces separate tags in delicious, but not in most other apps. If you use a space, your tag just became 2 tags that may not mean the same thing at all. Most sites have FAQs that answer those sorts of questions, but the syntax is not at all uniform among sites. That is why I usually check out other people's tags and, in some cases my own old ones, before tagging. I find it helpful to contribute to group sites, such as the one for this list for that reason as well. I like to watch and learn.
I am currently involved in teaching both at the K-12 and occasionally at the university level, and I agree that tagging is a great way to get the kind of higher order think that I, as a teacher, hope to encourage. All sorts of metacognitive processes take place during tagging and that kind of thinking about thinking is what makes students into learners. Just observing other people's tags sometimes starts great new lines of creative thought. I'm a big advocate of involving students in creating and tagging online content.
I clearly missed a very interesting seminar. Thank heavens for saved material.
I think the biggest down side to tagging is that because it doesn't have controlled vocabulary, it doesn't always help you to find what you are looking for. I sometimes have to look back at my own stuff to see how I've tagged it, so that similar items have the same tag.
On the other hand, tags let you see how other people organize or at least catagorize information. It sometimes gives a new creative insight on known resources and information.
I think the biggest down side to tagging is that because it doesn't have controlled vocabulary, it doesn't always help you to find what you are looking for. I sometimes have to look back at my own stuff to see how I've tagged it, so that similar items have the same tag.
On the other hand, tags let you see how other people organize or at least catagorize information. It sometimes gives a new creative insight on known resources and information.
This is a great example of my post regarding tags. Socially constructed vocabulary works!