del.icio.us project

For my digital media activism class, students were paired off into groups to begin learning how to use tagging technology online. This was our assignment:

"Assignment: Use del.icio.us for tagging web sites..

Tag 30 items:

15 of your own choice, related either to course readings or to your Zimbio page. Try to use it as a way to track items as they come up in the course of the project or to issues that are related to the readings or that you think would be of general interest."

I worked with a friend, who manages the "Human Rights Violations in China" Zimbio site.
You can view her zimbio site at: http://www.zimbio.com/Human+Rights+Violations+in+China..

The idea behind our tagging collaboration is explained below:

"As the Olympics is pushing China forward onto an international stage, human rights advocacy groups have taken this revealing as a way to bring these issues to the international community. Yet the media available to the international community often portrays the human rights issue in a black and white manner, often highlighting certain issues (i.e. Tibetan independence) and not recognizing their connection to the human rights of other groups in solidarity under the Chinese regime. Our tags highlight these different human rights groups and hope to encourage solidarity and collaboration between them. As we tag these organizations, we provide a brief description on their purpose."

Although Zimbio or blogger.com doesn't have interfaces to upload these links more interactively, people can still plan and work collectively on subjects using both collaborative blogging and tagging side-by-side.

You can download the del.icio.us application to your browser and very easily collectively research issues here: http://del.icio.us/help/registering