You can see tags working in any social network site or social bookmarking site of your choice. They are basically keywords or key phrases, sometimes abbreviated for ease of use.

For example, conferences often have tags so that you can follow the discussion online.  Sometimes the conversation in blogs and on Twitter can be more interesting than the speakers themselves!  A key place or topic will have a tag – Obama’s inauguration for example.

By tagging posts, files, pictures or tweets with a tag, people can more easily find resources that others are using or talking about.

• Tag “googlewave” = hashtag “#googlewave”: Twitter posts about Google Wave http://twitter.com/#search?q=googlewave
•  Tag “yellow”: Flickr photos which feature a lot of yellow http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/yellow
•  Tag “timemanagement”:  Delicious links (bookmarks) about time management  http://delicious.com/tag/timemanagement
•  Tag “flu”: Blogs mentioning the flu   http://technorati.com/tag/flu

You can see from these that it’s often useful to run words together because many sites can only handle tags that are a single word.

Recently I have been reflecting on reflection... At the moment I am tutoring both a How to Blog course and a couple of Online Tutoring courses. In both of the contexts covered by these online courses, although in very different ways, reflection is key.

In the case of a blog, being able to reflect effectively is key to writing thoughtful reflective blog posts on a variety of issues and topics, both those in which you are an expert, and those which you have just encountered. A reflective blog can be one way in which reflection on learning can take place. And for anyone, reflective writing is a skill that can be applied in a variety of contexts from writing business reports to project management, from teaching and learning to training or informal learning.  Read more