Scholar is a social bookmarking tool.
It offers the option to save all your “Favorites” on one website that is
permanently assigned to you for use anywhere, anytime you are on-line rather
than just from one individual computer.
Although Scholar is initially created
through Blackboard, it may be accessed directly through Scholar.com and can
permanently maintain information for you independent of your association with
Olivet.
Although your Scholar page is under your
control, it is designed to be available to others to view what you have
determined to be valuable. Looking
at other people’s Scholar bookmarks helps you quickly sort through vast amount
of information available on the web.
If you would like to add a bookmark to your page that would not be available
to others, select the “Private” option when you add the bookmark.
Activate (Create) your account.
In any course that has Scholar
enabled (it really doesn’t matter since you’ll access the same Scholar page
from any course), Click on Course Tools (at the left in the Tools
section)
Click on My Scholar Home – a screen
will be displayed to create an account or associate an existing account with
Olivet.
To create an account, complete the
information on the left. If you already have an account, use the right
portion of the screen.
Important:
Scholar user names are case
sensitive
Install the Bookmarklet by clicking
on the link in the upper right corner of the Scholar screen (the top right
corner of the white screen) and using the instructions provided.
A bookmarklet is a button that can be installed in your browser in
the Links Toolbar (Microsoft Internet Explorer) or Bookmarks Toolbar
(Mozilla Firefox). Once installed, any time you are browsing the Web and
discover a site you want to save to Scholar, you can click on the
bookmarklet to add that site to Scholar without ever having to navigate away
from the page
Right click on the REGULAR bookmarklet (the second line displayed on the screen – NOT the popup bookmarklet),
Choose Add to Favorites. (If Internet Explorer says the
bookmarklet you are adding might not be safe, just click Yes
to continue)
In the "Add a Favorite" dialog box select
"Links" for the "Create in:" field.
Click Add
At this point, you no
longer need to be on the Scholar web page to add information to your Scholar
home page. Anytime you would like
to add a link for a web page, click on “Scholar It!”(in your links toolbar).
An Add Bookmark Form will be displayed. Enter words that will help
you locate the site again (called tags) separated by a space.
Anytime you would like to return to your Scholar home page, click on the Scholar logo at the top of the page. When viewing bookmarks, the buttons in the upper right corner allow you to chose between your own (Mine), all Scholar bookmarks (this will be a lengthy list!), Popular (links used most frequently) or for the Course (if related to a course).
This form lets you manually add a bookmark to your Scholar Bookmarks collection and provide additional information about the resource as well as categorize it for future reference. Unless marked Private, others can use your information and classifications to help them in their own research and studies. You can also add bookmarks to Scholar by importing bookmarks from your browser or other social bookmarking services.
Bookmark Name: Enter the
title of the web page you want to bookmark.
URL: Enter the web address of the web page you want to bookmark.
Description: Provide notes about or a description of the web page you want to bookmark. If you have text selected BEFORE you open the Bookmark Form, the selected text will be displayed in the Description box automatically.
Tags: Tags are single words or short phrases that are meaningful to you to classify a bookmark. Enter tags separated by spaces, and if you want to use a phrase, put it in quotation marks. For example, you might tag a web page about King Arthur with England "King Arthur" literature.
Discipline Tag(s): Scholar includes a comprehensive list of Disciplines. Select one or more Discipline Tags that are appropriate for your bookmark from the drop-down list of Discipline Tags. You can also just start typing the name of a discipline and Scholar will prompt you with valid Discipline Tags from the list.
Course Tag(s): You can tag resources by course, as well. Scholar will provide a list of Blackboard courses in which you are currently enrolled. Select one or more Course Tags that are appropriate for your bookmarks from the drop-down list of Course Tags. You can also just start typing the name of one of your courses and Scholar will prompt you with the Course Titles of your list of Course Tags. Users can only use Course Tags from courses they are enrolled in.
Status Public/Private: By default all bookmarks are publicly viewable. Selecting private makes a bookmark viewable only by you; other users cannot see your private bookmarks. If you set the Status of a bookmark to Private, a "lock" icon will appear next to that bookmark in your My Bookmarks view.
The Scholar Home Page Screen consists of:
Your saved bookmarks
-- click on any link to display the represented webpage.
Streams
– a collection of bookmarks with similar topics.
Each of the green boxes in the Scholar screen above is referred to as a
Stream. Anytime you perform a
search on a topic, you have the option to save that search for future reference
and to display it in a Stream (with the Save button in the upper right corner of
the search results). Any saved
search may be added as a Stream to your Scholar Home Page (click on Add a Stream
in the top left corner of your Scholar home page).
A stream may be:
·
moved
around on the screen by dragging the colored bar above the bookmarks.
·
minimized
by clicking on the line at the right side of the colored bar
·
closed by
clicking on the X button at the right side of the colored bar
·
expanded
by clicking on View All at the bottom right side of the stream box
·
edited to
increase or decrease the number of links displayed by clicking on Edit List at
the bottom right side of the stream box
The Tag Cloud
– the large white box on the right side of the screen.
When you add a bookmark, you are given the option to enter words that
will help you locate the site again (called tags).
Each tag is represented in the Tag Cloud.
The more times a tag is used when adding a bookmark, the larger the word
will be in the Tag Cloud. The
screen example shown previously in this document shows that the Blackboard tag
has been used most frequently.
Tag Clouds are visual representations of the tags, Course Tags, and Discipline
Tags used to classify a set of bookmarks. Tag Clouds are sorted alphabetically,
but the size of the individual tags in the tag cloud indicates the frequency
with which the tag was used -- the more frequent the tag, the larger the size of
that tag in the Tag Cloud. You can click on a tag in the Tag Cloud to filter the
set of bookmarks by that tag.
You'll see four kinds of Tag Clouds in Scholar:
All searches in Scholar show both bookmark results and user results. If you do a keyword search for "running", you will get results both for bookmarks that were tagged "running", as well as people that have "running" as one of their interests.
On the search results page, there are Bookmarks and User tabs at the top to allow you to toggle between the different results sets. You can also use the drop-down next to the search field in the upper right of every Scholar page to choose which tab's content gets displayed first. Searches default to showing Bookmarks.
1.
To display your bookmarks by keyword,
click on any of the words in the Tag Cloud.
2.
To display all of your bookmarks,
click on
Mine (above the search options)
3.
To display all public bookmarks saved by
any Scholar user, click on
All (above the search options)
4.
To display the most popular public
bookmarks saved by any Scholar user,
click on
Popular (above the search options)
5.
To locate public bookmarks by keyword
that have been saved by you or other Scholar users,
enter a keyword in the Search box (above the Cloud Tag) and click on
Search.
6.
To locate public bookmarks by more than
one keyword that have been saved by you or other Scholar users,
click on
Advanced Search (above the Cloud
Tag) and follow the instructions shown.
7.
To locate all public bookmarks saved by
another person,
a.
click on
the drop down arrow after Bookmarks
in the first search box
b.
click on
Users
-- the user name must be exactly as displayed in previous search
lists
c.
enter the
user name in the second search box
d.
click on
Search
8.
To
return to your Scholar Home Page,
click on the Scholar logo in the upper
left corner of the screen. :
You may refine your Bookmark and User searches by categories. Controls allow you
to search only within your Friends, Favorites or Fans.
Advanced Search for Users makes it easy to find people in Scholar:
Remember, you can add users as Friends or Favorites right from your User Search
results!
In addition to using the Advanced Search form in Scholar, it is possible to directly enter search syntax into the Search box in Scholar. The format for this, with examples, is provided below:
Search Arguments can be any of the following string
prefix:string "string" prefix:"string" e.g.
discipline:Nursing
discipline:"Nursing"
Search arguments can be concatenated with spaces in between
to achieve AND results: prefix:string1 prefix:string2 i.e. this is equivalent to
"prefix:string1 AND prefix:string2". e.g.
inst:"Grand Rapids Community College" discipline:Nursing
Also, arguments can be grouped by parentheses, which means
that between groups of parens, there is an OR operation:
(prefix:string1 string2) (string3) (prefix:"string4" "string5") is equivalent to
(prefix:string1 AND string2) OR (string3) OR (prefix:"string4" AND "string5")
e.g.
(inst:"Grand Rapids Community College") (discipline:Nursing)
Valid prefixes:
"tag" (freeform tags) e.g. tag:surgery tag:"arthurian studies"
"discipline" (discipline tags) e.g. discipline:Nursing (Note: 1st
character of disciplines must be Capitalized)
"course" (course tags) e.g. course:"BIOL220-01: Introductory Oceanography
01-BIOL227-01" (Note: you must be a member of the course for a course search to
work)
"user" (beyond username) e.g. user:ekunnen
"inst" (institution) inst:"Grand Rapids Community College" (Note: 1st character
of institution names must be Capitalized)
"role" (course role) e.g. role:instructor
You can save any search by:
By saving a search, you are saving the search parameters, not the results.
Each time you access your Saved Search, the system runs the search again, thus
ensuring you always have the most up-to-date results.
You can always access your list of Saved Searches from the Advanced Search form
or any Search Results page.
Why Should I Save a Search?
Saving a search helps you get easy access to the most relevant resources for
you. If you find a set of search parameters that returns a list of
resources that is valuable to you, then saving it eliminates the need for you to
re-enter the search parameters every time you want that information.
Also, your Saved Searches can be
added to the My Scholar Home page
as Streams. With Streams, each time you access Scholar, you will get the
most recent, up-to-date resources that are relevant to you. Similarly,
instructors can add their Saved Searches to the Scholar Course Home to bring
dynamic, current content into the course environment.
1.
Display
the bookmark using the options described above
2.
To edit the book mark,
click on the first of the three buttons located at the right side
3.
To e-mail the book mark,
click on the second of the three buttons located at the right side
4.
To delete the book mark,
click on the last of the three buttons located at the right side
1.
Display
the bookmark using the options described above
2.
To copy the book mark,
click on the first of the three buttons located at the right side
3.
To e-mail the book mark,
click on the second of the three buttons located at the right side
4.
To report the book mark,
click on the last of the three buttons located at the right side
1.
Click on
Search or Advanced Search (above the Cloud Tag) with or without entering a
keyword
2.
To rename the Saved Search,
click on the first of the three buttons located at the right side
3.
To edit the Saved Search,
click on the second of the three buttons located at the right side
4.
To delete the Saved Search,
click on the last of the three buttons located at the right side
The Scholar Course Home course tool in the Blackboard Learning System course allows instructors to set up a Scholar Course Home page unique to their course with dynamic streams specifically for their students.
The first time a Blackboard Learning System instructor clicks on the course tool within their course, he or she will be asked to Register the Course with Scholar. The only thing the instructor needs to do is select a primary Discipline and submit the form. Scholar automatically creates a Scholar Course Home for that course and generates two Streams - one that displays all bookmarks tagged with the Course Tag for that course and one that displays all resources tagged with the Discipline Tag for the primary discipline the instructor selected.
Instructors can customize their course's Scholar Course Home by adding streams that are relevant and valuable to the course material. (Students do not have the ability to add Streams to the Scholar Course Home.)
Once a course has been registered, all members of the course will be able to access the Scholar Course Home from the course tool and start to use the resources. If a student has not yet created a Scholar account, they will be prompted to do so to get access to the Scholar Course Page.
As you tag more and more bookmarks, you may want to clean up your tag cloud by
deleting or renaming tags.
You can click on Settings and then Manage Tags to get to the Manage Tags page.
From here you can:
You can export your bookmark collection with the Export Bookmark feature within
Settings (top right navigation)
You have two ways you can export:
Once you hit "Export", Scholar will export the bookmarks you selected into a
Netscape bookmarks format which you can then import into any browser or other
social bookmarking service.
You can import existing bookmarks/favorites from your browser, or from another
social bookmarking service like del.icio.us, into your Scholar Bookmarks so that
you can keep all of your bookmarks in one place for easy access and easy use in
your research and studies. Just follow these simple steps below to build
out your Scholar collection!
This is a two stage process. First, you export or save your bookmarks from your
browser or del.icio.us account to a file. Second, you import this file into
Scholar.
Step One: Save your browser bookmarks to a file
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox (or Netscape)
Safari
del.icio.us
Step Two: Import the bookmark file into Scholar
Note: If you are importing a large number of bookmarks, the import may take awhile. Please be patient as the system uploads and once it is finished, you will see the uploaded bookmarks in My Bookmarks.
Scholar should be available in every course, however, a professor has the option to turn it off or on. If it is not displayed in the Course Tools area, use the steps below to make it available.