I'm disaggregating, disaggregating

I had a play around with different sites for aggregating together different resources and social profiles recently (see next post for comparison). As a result I have started using Tumblr quite a bit. As a result I have found a new slice of my online identity which a) I didn't know needed expressing and b) is distinct from other parts of my online identity which are currently satisfied mainly by this blog and twitter with a bit of Facebook, LastFM, delicious, etc thrown in.

So how am I using Tumblr? Pretty much as you'd expect, it's my online dump for anything interesting I come across, any half thoughts I have, things I may want to use later on, stuff to share, etc. I never became a big social bookmarker, but I am using Tumblr partly for this function.

The thing that differentiates Tumblr from this blog is the close-to-zero threshold. My blog has become the place I think things through. This means I rarely post straightforward links, or comments. There are lots of mini-posts, half-formed ideas then that never see the light of day on Edtechie. I know what you're thinking: if this is the stuff that gets past his quality filter, I'd hate to see what doesn't make it - well now you can at Edtechie Dumbr! And what differentiates my use of Tumblr from Twitter is that Tumblr is more about resources, compared with social interaction.

To summarise: Twitter is where I tell people I am going to the cinema and discuss it, Tumblr is the place where I share a clip of that film and Edtechie is the place where I build it up into a laboured analogy for elearning.

The reason I prefer Tumblr for sharing resources over delicious is that it mixes in more ingredients and elements of the personal. But that is only a marginal reason, and others prefer to use Twitter, Facebook or their blog in the way I am using Tumblr (or to use Posterous instead of Tumblr). So here's my five 'duh well of course' conclusions:

1. Your online identity continues to evolve
2. There is overlap between different tools to achieve this
3. There is no 'right way' to use a tool
4. Share, share, share.
5. Embed, embed, embed

Comments

[Liam Green-Hughes]

I recently started using Tumblr as well as an "inspirational scrapbook". The key for me was to stop worrying was it was "for" and just start collecting things I just liked to stimulate creativity. It's a great tool. Wrote it all up here: http://www.greenhughes.com/content/joy-tumblr

[Phil Reagan]

your search doesn't work. No results for "Wiki" or "e-learning"