Technorati is another one of those places where I could end up spending hours just surfing around. Anyone else out there sometimes feel voyeuristic?
First, let me give a little summary of what Technorati is in my own words to be sure I have it right. It's a search engine to find a particular topic in the millions of blogs in the blogosphere. You can search for blogs, blog posts, or simply by tags. Unlike Del.icio.us, where users/readers create the tags (post-publishing), bloggers/publishers create the tags in Technorati (pre-publishing). It's a way to find what the "unwashed masses" are talking about, what they think is news. It's a way to keep up with your favorite blogs (but don't I already have Google Reader for that?) or to see what everyone else's favorite is?
How can this be useful to me? Well, I do like to keep up with current events, and as a long-ago anthropology student, I'm interested in culture and pop culture, so I'm fascinated by what everyone is blogging about. I guess that's why I can get lost for hours poking around, moving from link to link. More specifically, though, I can search the topics that interest me and see what other "real people" think rather than "elitist" news, review, and publishing sources. AND, with the nature of blogging, I can actually converse with the writers! It's almost as if, rather than being consumers of news and information prepared by small numbers of people, the masses are actually the news MAKERS and information CREATORS now. I think that's very cool.
Can I see a use for this in the classroom? Not so much, at the moment, but then I haven't given it full thought, I'll admit. It WOULD be great to show students that "real people" write everyday, that there IS a purpose for being able to express oneself. No, we're not ALL going to be Judy Blumes, Stephen Kings, or Stephenie Meyers. But we ARE all writers in some form or fashion. Also, I can see myself using it to find appropriate topic-related blogs for students to follow. Say, birds again. Surely there are some bird-watchers and bird-lovers out there who have blogs about, well...birds. I could turn students on to those. Real-life learning through real-life interests.
As for tagging, I think it's great. I see benefits to both Del.icio.us type tagging and Technorati type tagging. I think bloggers should be able to categorize their own work with tags, but I think it's important for users/readers to be able to create their own meaningful tags, too. Now that I've explored tagging, I'll be doing much more of it!
And you may notice, dear reader, that I have added an "Add this to my Technorati favorites" button in the upper righthand corner of this blog. :-)
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