So del.icio.us
By now, most web surfers are familiar with bookmarking favorite websites. Bookmarking allows users to save shortcuts to their favorite websites locally on their computer and accessing them from their web browser. This traditional form of bookmarking is useful but limited – users are unable to access their favorites from other computers. Google and Yahoo, among other services, solve this problem by offering bookmark tools that are accessible through a user’s account from any computer.
Social bookmarking is another way to store and organize favorite websites on a bookmark service that is accessible from any computer with an Internet connection. A social bookmark can be used to house private bookmarks, or to share favorites with others. Users are encouraged to include a description of the site that they select. In addition, the tag feature allows users to categorize their content in ways that are meaningful to them or by following more standardized taxonomies for tagging. Another advantage of social bookmarking is that users can identify others in cyberspace who are interested in the same sites (the “saved by x number of other people” feature), which can lead to learning about more resources on a particular topic by reviewing other bookmarked lists, discovering unanticipated relationships within subject matter, and/or connecting to a community of people with similar interests.
Educationally, there are many ways to employ social bookmarks. For example, social bookmarks can help schools keep track of favorite websites in a central location. Students can use social bookmarks to demonstrate their Internet research skills, and to share and evaluate sites appropriate to their work. Students and faculty alike can access course-related bookmarks, including online references, booklists, class web activities, and more from home as well as from school.
Del.icio.us is an example of a social bookmark service; there are other sites as well. It is fairly easy to create a free account on del.icio.us. Go to del.icio.us at http://del.icio.us and explore. If you register for it, you can include a button on your web browser that will let you add websites to your del.icio.us account easily. Many webpages and blogs include a del.icio.us “badge” on their sites so that visitors need only click on the icon to add the resource to their account.
See jlearn2.0’s site on del.icio.us by going directly to the site at: http://del.icio.us/jlearn2.0 or by clicking on the del.icio.us icon on the bottom of this page.
Do you use social bookmarking? Share your ideas, successes and challenges!
Learn more:
del.icio.us help to get started
7 things you should know about… Social Bookmarking, Educause, May 2005
Simply Del.icio.us: Online Social Bookmarking, or: Tagging for Teaching by David Muir. An educator’s introductory guide to using social bookmarking and getting started on del.icio.us.
Tag – You’re Delicious by Andy Carvin. An introduction to del.icio.us for educators published in learning.now, hosted by PBS TeacherSource.