Okay, so we’ve started to find some useful / poor / interesting / pointless websites and information contained therein. So what’s the best way to keep track, manage and share them with others? well that would be social bookmarking. Using this tool (and there are a few variations out there, see the list at the bottom of this page) it is possible to manage everything you find on the Internet and usually it’s as easy as clicking a button and adding a few words. Because a whole load of other people are doing the same, then the system becomes even more useful by rating the best and worse that’s out there. There are so many benefits to using social bookmarking that it’s best to just get in there and try it out.

Let’s have a look at Delicious. All you need to start is a valid email address, you may already have one, you may have one or two. Ever thought of having one simply to sign up to all these services? as a kind of gateway? Anyway, back to Delicious. Again, we don’t want to tell you how to use it here, they do it much better than we could on their help page, so head over there to get started.
You can find all our bookmarks on there so add us into your network and we’ll do the same. similar to how we did on twitter. It’s up to you whether any of our bookmarks are of any use to you, but in any case, please let us know how you get on. Remember, it’s all about the conversation.

A few Social Bookmarking sites

Delicious

Stumble Upon

Furl

Here is ‘The social web’ as defined on Wikipedia.

The Social Web is currently used to describe how people socialize or interact with each other throughout the World Wide Web. Such people are brought together through a variety of shared interests. There are different ways in which people want to socialize on the Web today. The first kind of socializing is typified by “people focus” websites such as Bebo, Facebook, and Myspace. Such sites promote the person as focus of social interaction. To do this a profile is constructed by each user. In many ways the profile is similar to a passport.

The second kind of socializing is typified by a sort of “hobby focus” websites. For example, if one is interested in photography and wants to share this with like-minded people, then there are photography websites such as Flickr, Kodak Gallery and Photobucket.

There are also two ways in which people socialize with each other in the Social Web. The most general and most common type is always at a distance and only on the World Wide Web. In such socializing there is never face to face personal contact. Much of the socializing on Flickr is sharing of photos and making comments on the photos of others. However, where Flickr members come from a common local geographical area, then they are inclined to get together physically for a common photoshoot. This exemplifies the second type of socializing through the World Wide Web: that which leads to real physical contact. Typical examples of the latter arose historically from social networking both within and outside schools and colleges. Facebook’s origins are in the facebook of college students from Harvard University.

The Social Web may also be used to refer to two different, yet related concepts. The first is as a description of web 2.0 technologies that are focused on social interaction and community before anything else. The second is a proposal for a future network similar to the World Wide Web.

In terms of digital inclusion and adult learning, this can be the thing that currently ties everything together. Get involved with the social web, find the relevant networks and start sharing resources, news, applications – anything you like really.

There is a lot of stuff out there and it can be tricky knowing where to start. We like to get people using this stuff straight away so as we’re here, maybe we can get things going using a simple online application called ‘Twitter‘. This application is best described by the blurb on their website…

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

You only need an email address and password to start using Twitter and it’s really easy. Once you have registered, go to our twitter page and click ‘Follow’. We then get a message telling us that you are following us, we’ll follow you too. From then, we can send each other messages or ‘tweets’ about anything at all. In this context, it could be about learning resources and how to find them, other social web stuff, answers and questions..etc. From ‘following’ us, you can also follow any other relevant Twitter user and so we start to build our network of people who know stuff! probably more importantly, we start the conversation. It’s best understood by example so go get yourself a twitter account and we’ll show you where things can go!

http://www.twitter.com/

I guess initially I’m excited by the engagement potential that social media has to offer. Furthermore, I can see the potential it has within lifelong learning, health matters and unemployment within the community. I’ve found that i’m already implementing some of this stuff so it was a case of sourcing out some like minded individuals to see if we can progress on some of the ideas.

I’m currently looking into funding options, qualification accreditation and ‘Communities of Practice’ as a potential delivery model…or something like that … Key words for me this morning are Engagement, Empowerment & Confidence!

By the way, I don’t foresee my blog posts as being formal. As we’re using it as a reference tool too, I need to just get the stuff down pretty quickly.

The Social Enterprise option came about because both me and Kevin are keen for this project to benefit our local communities. We hope we can find support for our endevours!