Find something good on the Internet, save it to your favorites. The problem here is that Internet favorites are stored on your local computer. Save that great resource at work, you can’t retrieve it from home. You can solve this problem by using social bookmarking.
With social bookmarking, you can save your favorites to the internet where you can access them any time. However, there is much more to the story. Social bookmarking sites allow you to TAG your entries with YOUR descriptive words- a folksonomy. You decide on the classification system for your information. You may place multiple tags on saved items allowing you to simultaneously classify and save information in multiple ways.
Bookmark entries can be public and searchable. This means that you can search the social bookmarking site for specific TAGs or combination of TAGs. This gives you access to resources saved by others with the same TAGs. You will also see a list of suggested related tags along with the number of individuals who have saved the same resource. We can say more but you will just have to try it to believe it! Welcome to the world of social bookmarking.
For today’s adventures, you will have a chance to explore one of the best know social bookmarking sites-del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us).
Adventure 1: Explore how del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site, can be used as a tool for research. Adventure 2: Set up your own del.icio.us account Adventure 3: Adding links to your new del.icio.us account Adventure 4: What else can you do?
ADVENTURE 1
Objective: Explore how del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site, can be used as a tool for research.
DIRECTIONS
Go to http://del.icio.us. In the upper right corner of the window, you will find a search box where you can enter a search term. Remember that you are entering TAGs here which are single words based on a folksonomy. Start off by limiting your search to del.icio.us. You can change this later as you continue to explore. Here are some search terms to try.
Forensic- You should see a collection of forensic science sites
Shakespeare- Notice the text that states how many other people have saved a site. This will be noted with the words “saved by n people”. The darker the pink box around this text, the greater the number who have bookmarked the site with the term Shakespeare. Look at the difference between the tags with only a few people compared to the ones with many people tagging them. This is part of the social and collaborative aspect of social bookmarking.
Quadratic- Examine the list of “Everyone's favorites- related tags” Click on algebra and look for the entries tagged by the most people. Check out some of the other items
nais2008- What could this be? This is a standardized TAG that has been agreed upon for use at the Annual Conference of the National Association of Independent Schools. Anyone attending this conference who learns of a cool web resource and save it to del.icio.us using nais2008 as the tag. This means that you can get an aggregated list of the resources found by many people who have attended this conference.
Simply go to http://del.icio.us and click on the Getting Started link. Follow the directions and you will have a new account. You may be asked to verify the account by clicking on a link that has been sent to your e-mail. This is so that automated BOT programs can't sign users up for accounts they have not authorized. Once that is done, you are ready to use del.icio.us.
Objective: You will add links to your new del.icio.us account
DIRECTIONS
This is a very simple process. You can post entries in a couple of ways. Watch the short video on posting to del.icio.us then try it in your own del.icio.us account.
If you know of a couple of resources related to teaching and learning in the 21st century or other resources related to the NAIS 2008 conference, TAG them with nais2008 so that others can benefit from your finds. Remember that you can use multiple TAGS. This means that you can save this information in multiple ways. To get you started, here are a few links that you might want to add to your del.icio.us account. How do YOU plan to TAG these sites? Welcome to the world of folksonomies!
Objective: What else can you do with del.icio.us? How can you use this in your teaching?
DIRECTIONS
This is a time to push the limits. Explore! You can't break anything. Go for it. What else can you do with del.icio.us? Have you explored the RSS features? What is RSS? If you want to learn more about RSS, check out the RSS station or simply search del.icio.us for RSS. Think about how you can use this tool with other tools and existing learning platforms in your school. Do you have a great idea, post it on the conference demonstration wiki, school computing wiki, write a blog about it, share it with the world. Learning is a social process. Let's Socialize! Let's Learn!
