Technorati

Technorati sucked me in. And at a time when I can't be wasting time looking at popular blog posts and videos, what with midterms and all! Pretty cool stuff, though.

A few issues: Apparently, they recently redesigned the site (I see it's in beta), and some features, such as "Popular," are only available in the videos section. I am confused by the tagging feature. The Learning 2.0 website makes it seem like you need to include some hidden html code in your posts that contains data that the technorati crawler can harvest in order to assign your posts with tags, but there is no mention of this on the technorati site. All the site says is that these are popular tags that people are using this month.

I also found the search feature cumbersome. Whenever I tried to refine my searches, they ended returning less relevant blogs and posts from a broader range of subjects than when I would do an unrefined, simple keyword search. In either case, I wasn't really finding the comprehensive return of results that I was seeking.

In any event, I did manage to find an interesting definition of Learning 2.0 by Dan Pontefract by way of Tony Karrer at 2.0 and Interesting Times: eLearning Technology:

• the shift from a predominantly formal instructor-led/eLearning model to one that encompasses formal, informal and social learning methodologies
  
  Read more: http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/09/20-and-interesting-times.html#ixzz0U0uk67Xf

I am slowly coming to see that most learning is social, regardless of what you may happen to memorize from a textbook, exam, etc. Social media is taking this concept to a whole new level.