Tagging for Education to Help Other Educators

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Editorial - Technology Integration - Open Source

Written by Harry Grover Tuttle

Monday, 01 September 2008 05:00

A teacher may have a put up a class Web site, a blog, a wiki, pictures on Flickr, videos on YouTube, or social bookmarks. That teacher may produce excellent resources that can benefit other teachers. However, if the teacher has not tagged the material in an appropriate educational manner then the colleagues will not find the resources.

Tags are labels that the writer/creator adds to the Web 2.0 created materials. The writer creates his/her own tags; there is not a standard list of tags such as a Dewey Decimal system for books. Other educators will search for the material using these tags.

Some tagging practices do not help other educators to find the material. The creator will not just label the material by the person's name (Mr. Smith), the school (Red Jacket), the period (7th), school specific labels (course E103), general course titles (Science), cute titles (Pop Ups), textbook pages (pgs 130-142), or weekly assignments (Week 4). No other educator will know to search for these terms and therefore these tags are ineffective for others. Likewise, tags such as “elementary science” are so general that the searcher does not know the real purpose of the video.

Web 2.0 educational taggers can follow a general pattern of tagging which will allow others to find their materials. As they tag, they can think of how they would search for this material if they were trying to find it. They will go from the most general educational level to the more specific. They start with the subject area such as English and any synonyms such as ELA and English Language Arts. Next they can include any major subheading for the subject such as Literature, Writing, and Reading. They may want to include a mention of the state such as New York and then the standard reworded into phrases that others might search for such as Critical analysis, Evaluate Text and Compare text, compare and contrast. The taggers can include any specific materials used such as Don Quixote and Of Mice and Men. Furthermore, they may include what types of specific activities will be done such as concept map and PowerPoint. They can include a grade level such as high school, ninth grade, and Grade 9. Therefore the tags for a learning goal of comparing the themes in Don Quixote and Of Mice and Men can look like English, ELA, English Language Arts, Literature, Reading, New York 3.1, Critical analysis, Evaluate Text, Compare text, compare and contrast, Don Quixote, Of Mice and Men, concept map, PowerPoint, high school, ninth grade, Grade 9. Then, if the taggers wants to add school specific information, they can. The educational taggers will use more tags rather than fewer, since other educators may use synonyms instead of the taggers' original words.

If educators tag in educational terms, then they can help each other. Educators can more easily find better classroom resources to improve their students' learning.

Dr. Harry Grover Tuttle focuses on assessing and improving student learning through low- and high-tech tools.