I am not sure what to call it, housekeeping, digital clean up, or web maintenance. But whatever it is, it has taken up quite a bit of time and I am not yet done. In my role as K12 Technology Integration Specialist, I feel it is part of my responsibility to experiment with many of the web tools that are available for teachers. I believe I need to play with the tools to know what will be useful in different settings and how to use them. This means I have accounts everywhere. I have huge spreadsheet helping me keep track of it all. I have spent some time going through all these things keeping what is usefull, deleting those I will not use, just tiding up the spreadsheet.

I also took some time to work on my social bookmarking sites; Furl, del.icio.us and Diigo (this one is new to me). My first thought is why am I using three? I know I have been experimenting but I just can let them go. They each have features I like. At least with Diigo I can bookmark a web page to all three at once. I spent most of my time fixing the tags – this will take some more time. I started tagging before I really know what I was doing, some tags make sense and some do not. I think I need to make my own list of tags so I am consistent with what I use. I am glad I have not had time lately to upload any more photos to Flickr but it is also in need of a little maintenance before it too begins to resemble my basement. My other issue is RSS aggregaters or collectors. I am using bloglines, netvibes, the built in feature with flock, and experimenting with some others. I think I will be sticking with bloglines, because I most comfortable with it.

I realize I may have more to manage then the average internet user. For example a friend of mine has one blog, an aggregater, a bookmarking site and a Flickr account. Management of web tools is definitely a 21st century skill. What is the best, most secure way to keep track of your accounts, passwords and tags? How often should you go in and clean house? I think I need to put “clean up” on my calender more often so things do not get so out of hand. To think I have not even touched all my IM tools and Skype yet.