As I work on my computer, I often leave tabs open of websites I’ve visited and want to come back to. Every few days, it grows to a large list of tabs and I save them all in various word documents with, perhaps a few words about why I had the tab open, and how it related to other tabs.

Earlier this year, I participated in a connectivist MOOC which resulted in me having more such windows open. Sometimes, I’d gather the materials into a blog post. Other times, they’d just remain in my notes. The links would be not just to some blog post or other website, but posts shared or written by people I was connecting with. Perhaps I was commenting on what they were writing, or they were commenting on what I was writing. I tried being more deliberative about this during Digital Writing Month, but didn’t manage to sustain it.

I also participated in various poetry classes offered through Harvard’s MOOC. It had a nice annotation tool for annotating a poem, tagging it various ways, and commenting. You could see what the other students were tagging and saying as well.

I’ve looked for some sort of bookmarking tool that could pull all of this together. Something that a group could share. Something that you could show the links, between the pages, the writers, and various ideas. Something that people could comment on parts of an article or story. I’ve kicked around various tools. None really seem to do what I want and I haven’t been able to build a community around any of the incomplete tools.

A recent post on Facebook made me think again about the search for a good tool like this. A friend shared Genius.com’s annotations of the first part of Finnegan’s Wake. The annotations are full of links to Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, and Kate Bush.

The Kate Bush music video reminded me of a game we play in our family called YouTube Riff Off. One person plays a music video and the next person then plays some other music video that they connect with the first video. It can create an interesting series of music videos. For example, Southern Man, by Neil Young, followed by Sweet Home Alabama, by Lynyrd Skynyrd, (Well, I hope Neil Young will remember A southern man don't need him around anyhow) to All Summer Long by Kid Rock (Singing Sweet home Alabama all summer long).

Perhaps I will share some of my collections of links, and comments on them here on my blog. Perhaps I’ll do something similar for sequences from our family YouTube Riff Offs. Perhaps, I’ll find a tool better suited for this. Perhaps I’ll get others to join in. Perhaps, it will tie into my journey for the coming year.

Perhaps….

2016 comes with so much potential.