Tags, Tagging and Tagclouds

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Introduction^

Tag the World^

Do people tag things in the 'real' world?
Tagging is known as an activity in the digital realm, but the tendency to 'tag' things exists in the real world as well. The reasons for doing so are similar..

• Remembering - Post-its, Lists, Calendar, Tie a string on finger,
• Advertising/Promoting - Graffiti artists in the street, posters, bulletin boards
• Organizing - recycling
• Directing attention - signs
• Wayfinding - Geotags

It seems opportunities to 'tag' things are everywhere. As our world becomes increasingly digital, there will be more opportunities to tag spaces and things.

Links^

murmur∞ art project
Consumating∞
Tagalag∞

Activities^

Watch the video Information R/evolution∞
Add geotags to your photos
Tag yourself, or each other - Tagalag, Consumating

Questions^

What other things maybe useful to tag in a classroom settting?
What are the primary content elements in your domain and can they be tagged?

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What are Tags?^

• metadata
• keywords
• folders
• labels

As mentioned above, one way consider a tag is as a 'keyword', or a word that describes, categorizes or labels another thing. In the case of online resources these things are often, bookmarks, pictures, music or documents. In software development or web design, tagging can be used in the place of folders to organize large collections of information. Historically, (again in web design), multiple keywords are included in the header of a document to make them more easily findable by search engines. This is one of the arguments for using tags, as humans to increase the chances we will remember 'where we put something' by having more keywords associated with it.
Collaborative tagging systems are used to organize, browse and share resources online. By combing user generated input, folksonomies are generated or 'bottom-up' classification schemes.

What are the advantages to tags?^

• quick, easy, informal
• finding things
• related items can be grouped

In the real world, a document can be stored in ONE place, lets call that place a folder. The folder can be organized alphabetically, chronologically or some other system, but essentially you must remember where you put it in order to find it again. This is why personal classification system are such personal systems, and in fact some people prefer of NOT organizing at all which is another story altogether. Tagging, allows users to quickly note ANY AND ALL the words they feel define a resource, in a spontaneous and immediate manner, and forget them. It offers a reduced the mental load as compared to moving documents to a folder which may be part of a hierarchy itself. Taken individually, a tagset can become a useful digital representation of one persons efforts to classify a series of resources. Taken together, (folksonomy) the tagsets become a bottom up, collective representation of how a group of people choose to represent the information in question. Items that are tagged the same are grouped together and can be found as 'related items'.

Today on the internet we are exposed to large amount of information. reading logs, online news, subscribing to websites and participating in online communities all provide a rich source of digital material that we want to 'keep'. In the case of bookmarks, tagging provides a means to capture it for later use, the question is how often will you need to go back and reference those works?

Where are tags appropriate"^

• online communities
• sites with dynamic information, (blogs, galleries)

In formal classification schemes, there are often standards or a 'controlled vocabulary' that must be used to conform to a particular discipline. Tags are meant to be user controlled, so will not always (or ever) conform to a predefined set of rules. In the classroom setting, tagging can be used to see what content emerges as important to the class as a whole. As a learning activity, tags can emerge spontaneously as the course goes on.

Context is critical for tagging. In music tags become genres or 'playlists' (could be more than one word), with photos individuals names are often used as tags, etc.

Where do tags fail?^

Peoples mental models of the world around them differ, and the names and associations we give to the objects in our world do as well. Language, Slang, and multiple meanings of words can cause tagsets to become 'messy'. (ie. java vs java) Plural cases are also problematic, (ie. dog, dogs)

Links^

Activities^

Set up a class delicious account for all to share
Designate a 'course tag' and aggregate the results for the group to see and use
Experiment with different tagging systems to get a feel for the ways it is implemented in each system

Questions^

What are your favorite services that use tagging?
Does everybody really want to bother with all this tagging?
How can descrepancies between personal classifications systems be overcome?
How will the the content of your subject benefit from tagging?
Can students create their own set of keywords around a given topic? Could there be any benefit from discussing the outcomes?

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Tag "Clouds"?^

What's important is that it is there.

Tagclouds are an interface innovation

Tag clouds are a way to present a large collections of tags, as a 'weighted list', where each tag on the list is a different size of text on the page. This allows the user to easily scan for the most used tags in the set, and has been used to provide an overview or 'zeitgeist' to a collection of metadata.

Links^

Tagcloud Samples^

• flickr∞
• del.icio.us∞

Activities^

Make a tagcloud^

You can make a tagcloud (of sorts) right here in this wiki!

TagCrowd∞ is a web application for visualizing word frequencies in any user-supplied text using a tagcloud.

Zoomclouds∞ can create a tagcloud for your website from any RSS feed.

Some external scripts for making tagclouds on your site
petefreitag∞
lotsofcode∞

Questions^

• Do you use tagclouds or just find them pretty?
• What is your favorite/most useful tagcloud?
• Do you use or COULD you use tagclouds in the classroom?
• Would it be helpful for students to make and use their own tagclouds?

Tags in an educational context^

Most notably, tags can be (and are used) as a means for instructors to group related resources from the internet. This can be done as an aid for the instructor to manage a large collection of online information, or the entire class can be invited o participate. If blogs are used as part of the course environment, the activity of tagging can assist in the construction of the information into a coherent whole.

Links^

del.icio.us∞ - bookmarks
librarything∞
Zotero∞ - Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources.
citeulike∞ - academic articles
SNiPiTRON∞ - tag your research

Activities^

Research - Delicious and CiteUlike Zotero as tools to keeping online resources and bibliographies.

Mobtagging mediamatic∞ - Mobtagging is what happens when groups of users freely apply and exchange labels (metadata) to online information. It allows web users to specify, index, search and share information on their own terms.

Organize information - Large quantities of data

Fun 'n Games
ESP game∞ - The original picture tagging game
Google image labeler∞ - Compete to earn more google points and help google create a better internet.
Madonna tagging project∞ - Tag the queen of pop herself

Questions^

what is the most interesting part of this technology?
what part of your day to day work could be impacted? (research, readings, committee work, teaching, and personal interests)
who would you tell about it?
who would you ask about it?
how is the technology being used by educators today?
what are expectations of faculty: should SFU supply a chosen technology? support multiple versions?
what kind of awareness and training does faculty want - for yourselves? your graduate students? your teaching assistants? your undergraduate students?

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Benefits for faculty

Benefits for students

Issues or concerns

Implementation

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Rough notes below

Classic web design principles were "less is more"
Logical paths (hierarchies)
Tagcloud should exist as an adjunct to professional classification schemes.


Tagging motivation
Graffiti, Room of strangers, for remembering
The tools need to be adaptable to the resources they are being applied to.
Of course context. Different resources mean different tagging behaviors: music, photos, links, people

Librarians shudder at the thought, but people are needing to be librarians themselves

It is powerful because you can do it!



Categorization

Precedents for remembering: Lists, Scheduling, Daytimers, CalendarÖ

Categorization on a site often driven by multiple factors, not always the user.

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You're It!

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Popular tag Bookmarks on Delicious