I'm staring at citeulike right now. I'm also a bit stumped about my presentation. I've done the background reading, hunted around on the net a bit, and have a generally good idea what the site is about so it's time to register.
Now I'm nervous. Not because anything has become difficult, far from it, but that registration page is beginning to make me nervous that there's not a whole lot to say here. That might be fine, I talk too much as it is, but I do have to do a presentation here.
Registering is simple, one page and you're done. It's easier to register for this site than it is to register to vote on all-star selection for any of the major sports. Of course, a lot of the added complexity in all-star voting is security measures because people cheat. Bots and all kind of nonsense abounds when it comes to such things, but that's another post.
I'm registered and I've forced my brain off that tangent. Now it's time to play a bit. I'm not noticing a whole lot of difference between this and social bookmarking sites I've been to. Home page with your list of references/bookmarks, page showing you who's interested in what you are, search engine, etc. The big difference is the content, which is a good sign because if the difficulty level of the material wasn't higher on Citeulike I'd be worried. One of my biggest pet peeves on the net is silliness masquerading as scholarship and Citeulike seems to maneuver away from that fairly neatly. FAQ says they check and move things around so the peer-reviewed articles get precedence.
This site, as I play with it more and more, seems more and more like a no explanation really needed type of place. In a classroom, I'd probably just get everyone registered, show them the tools, then make them do searches and play with the tools. When it comes to educational tools, computers included, I'm a big believer in allowing students to choose what they will use and I think necessity will push the student to learn the tools on the site that they will actually use. Unfortunately, I'm again concerned that there's a lack of material to work with. Honestly, I've worked with less to get a grip on, but never when it was the major focus of the lesson. I love the site, don't get me wrong, but I have this bad tendency to linguistically panic when there's nothing left to say and I feel like I should be saying more.
For instance, the bookmarklet. I went looking for it because I use Del.icio.us all the time and I wondered if Citeulike had a tool like their marking tool. I found it, I installed it, and it works. It works the way it's supposed to. It doesn't lock up, screw up the information, or anything else.
It's not supposed to work. It's supposed to hand me endless problems with a gleeful chuckle. Then I get to say “One thing to watch out for...” only there's nothing to watch out for. I'm beginning to see a pattern here, actually.
In the end, I think the simplicity that is a strength of this site is going to make me simply present and then advise people to play with it. Nothing wrong with that, but I've got this suspicion that I'm going to be griping at myself in my next post.
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