Web 2.0
January 29, 2009
“How can social bookmarking play a role in higher education?” asks Bryan Alexander in his article about Web 2.0. The two sites that follow Mr. Alexander’s question include the Penntags project at UPenn and Harvard’s H2O. These social bookmarking sites share the common
goal of linking communities together to promote educational collaboration. The sites use “tags” or “playlists” to create links to books, journal articles, websites, and other educational materials that can be grouped by interests/ideas/projects.
UPenn’s Penntags project is for members of the UPenn community. The project allows its users to “collect and maintain URLs, links to journal articles, records in Franklin (library), our online catalog, and VCat (online video catalog)…” Users assign tags to these resources or can group them into projects for easier organization. Penntags encourages these tags to be used collaboratively to promote “social discovery.” Using Penntags as a “discovery tool” leads users to find other people in the UPenn community with common interests/goals. Most importantly, Penntags is a great resource for research. Below is the Penntags Project:
Harvard’s H2O from The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law promotes the concept of a “global community” beyond the Harvard campus. H2O’s goal is to connect classrooms whether those classrooms are down the hall from one another or across an ocean. H2O users create playlists which provide “a series of links to books, articles, and other materials that explore an idea or set the stage for a course, discussion, or current event.” Some of H2O’s prominent uses listed on the website include: transforming syllabi into world-wide learning tools, sharing reading lists with global scholars, organizations, and cultural leaders, and to promote the transfer of ideas and expertise between students, professors, and researchers. Below is Harvard’s H2O:
Of the two, the most useful website is Harvard’s H2O. Being that the site is not limited to just the Harvard community allows more people to connect with one another and share a greater wealth of knowledge. The idea that you can connect with a classroom halfway around the world is a concept that is modern. Also, the website is easier to use and navigate than Penntags because of its thoughtful organization.
