Piling?? What is this?

Piling refers to the process we all engage in as learners while classifying posts according to self-identified categories. For example, I have been deliberately choosing  the tag "student blogging tutorials" to ensure that when a visitor clicks on that tag, they will get a link that shows all the other posts with that same tag.

For example, although piling is unique to this post, the tag student blogging tutorial is connected (at this point) to three related tutorials, which you view as a list of posts that share that tag. This is what is meant by piling, the deliberate classification of posts by category using tags.

Tag Clouds are a great way to illustrate the idea of piling even further. Experienced bloggers use this feature to monitor their overall content structure, and often re-visit posts and revise the tags based on new patterns. An example of a randomly formed collective Tag Cloud can be found here. (although it is quite limited and does not provide much information about the diversity of topics discussed in the blogs).

Another example of the use of piling that offers a visual overview of keywords is the Tag Cloud within Me2U . This Tag Cloud demonstrates the potential for piling. Although most Group Tag Clouds illustrate piling which occurs in a haphazard, random fashion, this piling feature is utilized effectively by individual bloggers for focusing blogging practice.