About two years ago, I was working as a web designer and developer in a Public Health School. My boss and work colleague was a very knowledgeable web developer with a great pedagogical sense: he would design tutorials so that I can gain hands-on practice, take time to explain concepts, etc.
A first event
One day, he introduced me to the social bookmarking system del.icio.us: he explained me what this tool was all about, how I could benefit from using it, etc.
Even though I would have acknowledged the added value of such tool for people working with tons of information, I remember feeling overall quite sceptical about it at the time:
Why would I need to associate tags with my bookmarks when I can store most of them in my web browser and find them back without much problem?
Nevertheless, he had already encouraged me to create an account and given me some reference web links to start with.
Coincidence or not, from that time on, I got to use more and more websites as references on various subjects: web development and design, possible e-learning master courses (I was already considering returning to studies), photography websites and so on. That's when I started to realise the interest of such a tool. I could:
- organise my bookmarks in an effective manner (tags, tag groups, etc.)
- share them with people
- search tags in a way that gives me a different view from that of Google: I can get an idea of the popularity (quality?) of a resource
Of course, it did require me to think harder as to which tags associate with every page I would save (you quickly realise that using consistent tags is essential to keep the whole thing from becoming a mess), but on the other hand, it makes it really convenient to find the information when you need it.
After two years of heavy use of it ("I'm the proud father of 710 bookmarks"
), I have realised that listening to other people's advice can be very useful, especially when working/evolving in a similar field, where our everyday needs and concerns are likely to be very similar.
A second event
Having said that, I encountered a very similar situation when starting the Understanding learning in the Online environment module: one student suggested that we could use such a system to share web resources. He proposed to use Diigo to do that, saying that it had additional benefits as compared to del.icio.us.
Knowing how painful it can be to maintain two tools (with the same purpose) at the time, my first feeling was:
How am I gonna transfer all my tags to this... Diigo?!?! 
Remembering the eventually highly beneficial event that got me to know del.icio.us, I was still a bit curious and said that I was willing to give Diigo a try.
After having played with it for a few days, I must say that this time again, the experience proved worthwhile. In addition to what del.icio.us provides, it enables:
- highlighting parts of web pages that we feel important
- adding annotations to web pages
- sharing those annotations
- subject watch (tag watch feature)

Figure 1: Diigo highlighting and bookmarking features
A writable Web...
These features are really useful in our every day student tasks, especially when it comes to reading articles. The previously mentionned characteristics even take us further by making the web writable and allowing some form of collaborative work (as a side note, it would be very interesting to explore how such tool may be used for educational purposes):
- as with del.icio.us, we can get a feel of the quality of some resource by the number of people who bookmarked it
- it gives a view of what is important in a document
- it enables some form of authoring since anyone can add annotations and decide to share them with others
However, we must be careful with this feature since what's seen as being important depends on many factors among which the author, their goals while reading the document (for instance, was he/she looking for something specific about a particular topic?), the context, etc.
But, taken with care, all these features are very useful to our everyday work.
And again, I realise I would have missed out on them if I hadn't given them a try.
Finding the right balance
I understand that our resistance to change, to new ideas and behaviours is a normal and essential process in our understanding and learning: as stressed by Papert's concept of connections (1996), it makes us able to critically analyse/evaluate incoming information to assess its relevance.
On the other hand, this event has reinforced my knowledge that it's always important to listen to people's suggestions, point of views, advice and that I should probably try and find a better balance between resistance and open-mindedness.
In a nutshell, experience tends to show that more experienced people know better!
References:
Papert, S. (1996) A word for learning. In Constructionism in practice : designing, thinking, and learning in a digital world. Y. B. Kafai and M. Resnick. Mahwah, N.J., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
3 Comments (+/-)
One small point - Clara and I have divided up the class list between us so that we don't both have to look over 30+ blogs all the time, so it'll just be me reading yours, mainly (although if there's anything you'd particularly like her to see, I'm sure she'd be happy to pop by). Usually I tend to cycle through my batch of blogs and comment on each in turn, sometimes over a few days, with the aim being to make sure my desk is clear by the end of the week; some weeks I get the chance to visit the same blogs two or three times, but some weeks other things get in the way. If you ever feel you haven't heard from me within a reasonable number of days, give me a poke via WebCT mail or regular email.
This post outlines your expectations well - I hope we can meet them! - and I'm glad your first impressions have been positive. You're absolutely right that having the viewpoints of both learner and teacher is a great benefit to studying this subject in this way.
Hi Rory,
Don't worry for any delay: I actually find that you've replied pretty quickly
And thank you for the encouraging feedback!
In the light of my so far small experience of studying on this master, I would like to update my general concerns:
The past few days have had me fully realise the challenge of working by distance learning, mainly in terms of organisation/tasks scheduling. This issue is even more relevant considering my full time student status: unlike in tradionnal face-to-face teaching where lectures and tutorials are mainly scheduled by the academic staffs and constrained by room availability, the freedom of this Masters has made me run into the problem of time productivity.
We well soon look at ways of solving this problem...