Tagging

One of this week's reading in class was on tagging and folksonomies.  One study had students use Diigo, a social media bookmarking tool, to tag course-related materials.  Tagging could be done free-style, using dictionary only, and a combined free-style/dictionary method.  The two key benefits of tagging are tagging material in a way that peers might search for it, and tagging clearly to help people find items most relevant to their interests and needs.   But the bottom line is tagging is only effective "when the end users can find the information that they seek,"  (Dennen, V.P., Bagdy, L.M., & Cates, M.L. (2018). Effective tagging practices for online learning environments: An exploratory study of approach and accuracy. Online Learning, 22(3), 103-120.)    

While many tags include nouns to indicate the item's content, tags can also identify the type of material, the author, personal feelings, etc.  Conversely, tag dictionaries provide standardized naming conventions.  Normally, most tags cue off the resources and the users of tagged content.  

Another study illustrated the power and variability of folksonomies in tagging (Petrucco, C., Learning about evaluation and assessment: teacher's use of folksonomies and ontology in an online narrative environment. Department of Education, University of Padua, Padova, Italy 2011).  It noted that when trying to build ontologies of various disciplines, there can be different interpretations and meanings of key terms.  Consequently, the author said it is not possible to have a single "fixed" ontology for a field of research or discipline.

Instead, the free-styling method of tagging can lead to a "tag cloud" that grows and changes dynamically based on users' needs over time.  It is also heavily influenced by the users feelings and mood as well. In this way, tagging is more "democratic and inter-cultural."

To check this out on a personal level, I consulted my girlfriend's tags.   She is an accomplished artist of various mediums (painting, sculpture, multi-media, etc.), and has recently created a line of hand-made animal spirit guide sculptures, each with its specific purpose, energy and possible users/audience.  Each is completely unique, and they are hand-made out of a variety of gem stones, metals, and materials.  I checked to see type and quantity of tags she used to describe an amazing Ram spirit guide, and her choice of tags revealed she was focusing on tags relating to animals, spirituality, feelings,  the art world, and location.   Here are her tags:  #ram #spiritualty  #spiritual  #spiritualawakenings #animals  #animalguide #assemblageart  #assemblyageartisit #assemblagesculpture  # universe #love #unity #unityconsciousness #artgalleries #sculptureart #scullptureartist #sculpture #generalpublic  #ellendegeneres #miley #believe #mediation #crystals #fiberart #health #angels #nyc.

She demonstrated the essence of a free-style tagging which clearly addresses the emotion and intention of her tagging as narration on her art.  Her choice insured people searching could find her based on a wide variety of searches: animals, emotion (love, unity), spirituality, various art mediums, art galleries, and even location (NYC).