Social Tagging and Learning: The Fuzzy Line between Private and Public Space

Abstract

Social tagging systems celebrate enormous growth rates on the World Wide Web. This chapter looks at social tagging from an educational perspective, particularly its use for educational environments. The authors identify the processes underlying social tagging from an embodied interaction perspective. The authors will support the thesis that emerging folksonomies are at the base of meaningful interaction processes between user and system and also, at the same time, social processes between groups of people. This chapter argues that the fuzzy line between private and public space plays a crucial role. Moreover, tags represent embodied conceptualizations, whose potential effectiveness for learning will be discussed in this chapter. The authors will provide an example of a learning software for children (Amici, implemented by one of the authors) in which social tagging is used to support sharing in a programming environment to showcase how embodiment of conceptualization as well as constant coupling through moving between private and public space is achieved through tagging in the system.