What is a tag?
A tag is a word, or words, assigned to a piece of information (such as a picture, article, or video clip), that describes the content of the item and allows you to search and cross-reference information online.
How does it work?
You might tag a picture of a parrot as "animal", "bird" and "colourful". You might then tag a picture of a tropical fish as "animal", "fish", and "colourful". Later when you want to find information about colourful animals, you could search your tagged items for "animal" and "colourful". There are websites that allow you to store your tags in one location and for you to share your tags and see other people's.
What's great about tagging?
Tagging helps you remember your favourite web pages and cross-reference information you've found. By sharing and looking at other people's tags you can quickly find even more information other people like.
What do you need to keep in mind if your children are tagging?
There is no structure in the way people assign tags so following some links could lead your children to inappropriate web content.
Want to know more about tagging?
What is it?
Twitter is a micro-blog. This is a social networking website that people can sign up for, and send out regular updates on what they are doing. The catch is, it needs to be said in less than 140 characters. Your updates are called ‘tweets’.
How does it work?
Firstly, you sign up to get a free account. Then you can search for people to follow—that can be anyone from friends of yours to celebrities or politicians that you are interested in. People may ask to follow you too, and you can accept them so they can see your regular updates. On your homepage, Twitter asks, “What are you doing?” and you start your tweets with answering that question.
Why is Twitter useful?
People use Twitter to share information and discuss subjects of interest. It is free to use and really easy to update quickly.
What do you need to keep in mind if your children are tweeting?
Twitter users must be at least 13 years old. Your child needs to be conscious of their choice of screen name—nothing that might provoke the wrong type of person being friends with them.
Anything your child says on a tweet can be seen by anyone else looking at Twitter. Remind your child:
- Not to say anything they wouldn’t want the public to know—this includes any personal information about their school name, address, sports teams, etc.
- To use the settings section to protect their updates from being viewed by anyone who they haven’t approved as a follower. This will also keep your child’s updates from appearing on the public timeline.
- Never to arrange to meet up with anyone they meet through Twitter unless they speak to you first.
- To choose a username (online computer nickname) that doesn’t give away their real name or age.
- If someone says or does something that makes them feel uncomfortable, they should tell you.
Want to know more about Twitter?
Sign up and start tweeting: www.twitter.com
If you want to include a URL in your tweets, you may need help making it fit into the character limitations: www.tinyurl.com
Other micro-blog sites:
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