Chapter six gave readers a short and clear look into some of today’s new social media tools. I found some of the benefits Richardson lists for the educational uses of Twitter interesting. His stance is that Twitter can be used as a multi-dimensional educational tool that can help people learn and communicate across the globe. While there is no doubt that Twitter has some benefits, I would argue it is also an unreliable way to find out information. At the end of the day, Twitter is not unbiased and much of what people Tweet about cannot be substantiated. Furthermore, learning how to create a clear and complete thought in a 140 characters or less can be a good thing, but I also find that it limits thoughtful analysis that is needed to get harder concepts and ideas across to the public. Although I found some of Twitter’s functions to be somewhat useful, I would be very skeptical in calling it a potentially good and accurate learning tool.
I thought Richardson’s ideas on social bookmarking services and how the general public is essentially coming up with new ways to classify things, a very interesting concept. Richardson talks about sites like “delicious” and its ability to share information that someone else has found with a wide group of people. This in essence strengthens people’s knowledge base and compiles information into neat and easy to find categories. Tagging information, like tagging a picture on facebook, seems to be a logical step in the information sharing evolutionary process. Like Richardson writes, the need for professional trained librarians to organize information is becoming a thing of the past as regular people come up with logical and easy ways to find and classify information. I believe as the internet grows, we will see much more of this type of information sharing.
It is also interesting to see how our once, extremely individualistic culture is becoming a more intertwined communal society. As people begin to communicate and share things in a collectivistic way, the techniques in which I and others classify information will eventually move from a less individual process to a more universal system. Forcing people, as Richardson writes, to redefine the way we classify information. One could even go so far as to say, the internet and social bookmarking sites are bringing people closer together.
All in all, social bookmarking sites seem like the next generation in education and information sharing. I am excited to see how I can personally use these tools to increase my knowledge base and hopefully someone else’s as well.
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