The first thing I thought about when I saw tags this week was that I don’t use them on this blog. As I add photos and other metadata to my posts each week, I look at the “tags” section and think, “I should really add some tags.” I never do! I convinced myself that it wasn’t that important in this context, but I have used tagging in other places.
As I worked on larger research projects and collected references in Zotero, an application to collect and share research, I used tagging extensively. I would collect a lot of papers only by skimming the abstracts and keywords. Later after reading the paper, I added tags to indicate which papers I intended to use and for what purpose.
One of my common tags was “Read first” to remind me of the papers I thought were most useful to the report. I added a “used” tag once I referred to my report. This was helpful to know which papers I needed to include in the reference section of my paper. I have not used social tagging as described in this week’s reading.
I have used tagging on social media, Facebook, and Instagram. Mostly I’ve used it on Instagram. My most common tag is “#baseballlife”. I go to several baseball games each year and usually post a picture from the stadium.
I know how helpful tagging can be, but I generally find it a hassle to maintain. I use it on a project-by-project basis based on its size and complexity.
Hi Vanessa – this was an interesting read. I am def not into tagging and can barely keep up with our class hashtag #eme6414. I’m used to just posting and going about my business. However, if there is a trending topic, I will click on the tag and follow the rabbit hole from the first tweet to the last, lol.
For me, and until this week, tags were basically cues people used on Instagram, Twitter, or FB to illustrate their posts. I know it sounds very basic, but I did not really think of using them for organizing materials or even ideas or even better, for improving my thinking process.
Thank you very much for mentioning Zotero! I use it regularly when creating a bibliography, but I did not think of using the tag feature to sort references into various collections based on the tags.
Also, I am trying to give Diigo a chance, though I find its functioning very difficult (or the tutorials are really not good, or I’m really not understanding the concept).
I would like to blog about my progression and see if tagging helps me to learn and work better.