Blinklist | Learning in the Blink of an Eye

The passionate crew over at MindValley have joined the social software party with a new web-based rapid bookmarking and knowledge-sharing tool named BlinkList. A curious name that accurately describes how quickly and easily you can manage, add, share, tag, or syndicate your links in—well…in the blink of an eye!

BlinkList, like other social bookmarking applications, is based on social networking, tags, folksonomies, and collaborative knowledge sharing. As BlinkList users search the web they can easily save their web searches, tag them with keywords and/or descriptions, and then depending on whether they have marked the links private or public, share their cache of knowledge with the BlinkList community.

Simply stated, MindValley recognizes that online community hinges on the users ability to easily access their information without frustrating them to the point they won’t use the software (a point which is—surprisingly--often overlooked).

Rooted in constructivist theory, BlinkList is designed to act as a facilitator, providing users with the tools to chunk, scaffold, and organize knowledge in a format that best suits them. In a nutshell, BlinkList opens the path to knowledge instead of being a digital pothole on the e-learning super information highway.

Here are just a few of the unique features in BlinkList (with just a twist of learning theory thrown in for good measure!):

Knowledge Tags

As you store and tag more content, it becomes more and more difficult to remember what tag you used for similar content. But don’t fret! MindValley Labs has come up with a slick way to help you to maintain tagging consistency.

Here’s how it works: as you add links and other content to your cache BlinkList auto-magically suggests tags you have already used. This simple step makes it easier to find content at a later date, prevents user frustration with the technology, and allows students to focus on their learning.

Ready for another neat techno-constructivist BlinkList feature? When you click on a tag, BlinkList shows related tags, thereby allowing users to easily find topics and resources related to their search. But wait. There’s more! By using the tag filter you can drill down even deeper into the BlinkList community knowledge reserves to locate the resources most relevant to your particular needs.

Think of it as the MindValley version of Legitimate Peripheral Participation.

Social Learning Tool

BlinkList allows users to make notes before they save their links to a list. This feature could be especially useful for a collaborative project wherein groups conduct research on the web, saving, tagging, and organizing their content in a BlinkList, and then adding annotations in the link description field.

In this example, BlinkList not only works as a tool to support project-based learning activities, but simultaneously assists students develop crucial information and technology skills--all in a ‘real world’ context.

The process of collecting research and creating the annotation not only develops writing skills, but also provides the teacher with an opportunity to assess the learner’s level of understanding, and review content with their students.

As neo-millennial, and Generation C students begin to flood classrooms, they will expect activities that allow them to pick and choose multiple types of social media (blogs, wiki, gaming, social bookmarking) to support their digital learning styles. Recent studies in online course design have shown that the integration of web-based communities and collaborative assignments into the course design has a positive influence on learning and student retention.

Save Research in a Blink

Have you ever done research on the web, saved a bunch of links in IE Explorer “Favorites” folders, and then had a heck of a time finding them again? Well, BlinkList simplifies the whole process and lets you focus on your needs instead of spending time scanning those IE folders looking for your content.

By simply (there’s that word again!) adding a tag or two, you have created a list that can be accessed at a later date. Since each tag has its own URL, you can link from your blog, course syllabus, research paper, or even Flickr account to that specific tag list. Now you have a powerful cache of resources that work in tandem with your other social media tools.

What? Not easy enough? After you save a site, just click the star icon and the link will be added to your Favorites list in the tag manager (hold on, that’s up next!), and highlighted with a bright yellow star!

As the Naked Chef would say, “Easy Peasy!”

Tag Manager

The MindValley crew has taken in consideration that end users have differing ways of understanding (multiple intelligences) and organizing information. The ingenious Tag Manager provides users with multiple ways to organize and view their BlinkList.

But who decides which tags to use? BlinkList? No. You!

The BlinkList folks describe tags as “multiple mental notes that might make sense, depending on what it is that you are saving.” Since only you know what tags will help you find your data, you get to decide how to label and organize your content. BlinkList will auto-suggest tags, but ultimately the user (that’s you!) has the final word. In effect, BlinkList starts thinking like you do, making it easier for you to locate your links when you need them!

The BlinkList Tag Manager sorts your links in three categories: Favorites, Most Popular, and Most recent. As you build up a cache of links, Blink List puts your most used tags in a little pile—they call this a tag cloud. As you begin to use your tags, the tag cloud begins to change. Larger font, gradient bolding, and different colors--all to help you quickly scan the tag cloud for your most used tags.

The Social Web

A click on a tag from the community tag cloud or a quick tag search allows you to find others who share common interests. You can then see what resources they are sharing with the BlinkList community and add the ones you find most relevant to your BlinkList. And vice-versa. Because BlinkList is a web-based tool, you can access your links and those of others in the BlinkList community from any web-enabled computer or mobile device.

Just a simple click of the "BlinkRSS" button allows users syndicate tag content to a classroom blog, student portfolio, school website, aggregator--or any other site for that matter! BlinkList even provides the HTML snippet for you to pop into your website.

MindValley vs. The Giants

The MindValley folks are clearly on the verge of something big with BlinkList. To be fair, it’s still in an early beta stage and will require some tweaks. Moreover, at this point, all of the social interchange is asynchronous. It would be nice to see BlinkList integrated with some “real time” synchronous capabilities.

And while they are more than aware of the fight ahead of them, their infectious enthusiasm (in conjunction with their terrific product) is sure to propel them to the front of the pack. By now it should be clear that BlinkList is so feature rich (the “scary” part is that they’re just getting warmed up!), and full of possibilities they can’t all be discussed in one post.

Tag! You’re It!

MindValley has created an impressive product with so many applications that learning communities--from grade school to corporate training—will be looking for ways to integrate BlinkList into their curriculum.

For the last several months there’s been a lot of buzz about a renaissance on the web. And with the arrival of BlinkList, the optimistic, passionate team over at MindValley seems to be shouting, “Enough talk, let’s get this party started!”

Game on.

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