Alpha release of possible bookmarking solution

For 15 years the Department has maintained a collection of bookmarks to useful curriculum resources for teachers. The bookmarks are accessed as URLs coded into intranet webpages. The content is located across various Department systems and in multiple external storage/services. Access to these bookmarks has dropped in recent years and many bookmarks have become outdated or broken.

This service is now being reviewed to meet new needs:

• accessibility - mobile devices and open access
• resource discovery - effective searching and browsing
• content curation - sustainable and quality assured

One possible solution is to move all the bookmarks to a social bookmarking service that includes tools for sustainable content creation by multiple users and provides opportunities to develop QA workflows.

Captured bookmarks can be tagged in a way that facilitates research discovery and mobile and desktop apps provide accessible across devices.

Following agile development methods such those outlined by several NextGen Government presenters earlier this year a decision has been made to quickly develop an 'alpha' product and begin user testing within 6-8 weeks. A few topics have been selected to bookmark and a preliminary workflow has been established.

Evernote has been chosen to host the 'alpha' product. Evernote is a well established service with the required feature set to meet the needs identified above. Some staff currently use Evernote.
Bookmarks will be migrated from Evernote into OneNote which is used by many staff. OneNote doesn't have the same functionality as Evernote but will provide an adequate service.

Bookmarks will also be exported from Evernote to an 'HTML Bookmark' web page accessible across all browsers.

Users will also have the option of importing and customising Evernote and OneNote bookmark notebooks to meet specific needs.

The diigo service was tested for importing the HTML Bookmark file but tags, descriptions and graphics did not import so this part of the solution was not implemented.

My Education and specifically ME Online has been chosen as one of three topics for early 'alpha' release and feedback.

HTML Bookmarks webpage

Evernote ENEX import file (unzip before importing into Evernote)

OneNote ME Online Link (Department staff only at this stage)