Monday, March 24, 2008

Del.icio.us Uses for Social Bookmarking

I'm warming up to social bookmarking, and I know that some teachers have been trying to understand how social bookmarking can be useful. Here are some ideas:
  • Preparing for a class or workshop, I have found and tagged items that I want to demonstrate. By giving them all a specific tag I can find them easily by opening up my Del.icio.us account and clicking on the tag. Example: Workshop.
  • I have a list of web articles that I want students to read for an assignment. I simply add them to my Del.icio.us with a special tag like "MGMT215-A1" (using a code to identify the assignment). Then when I select all items with this tag, I can create a URL just for this list and include it in my Blackboard course materials. Students don't need a del.icio.us account to view it, they simply see the list of links. I can also add comments. Example: MGMT 215 Links. You can easily reuse these links from class to class.
  • I find articles on the web that my husband or a friend might be interested in. I simply add their del.icio.us ID to my network, and now I can add a tag "for:"+ their ID and it will show up in their list. By the way, Corey is already having fun with this one. He posted a link in my "Links for You" on "How to Effectively Load a Dishwasher." Is that a hint? :)
  • Create a group resource account that can be shared and add the link to a blog or website. You can give the login and password out, or any group members with their own Del.icio.us accounts can share links with others by adding the group account to their network and use the "for:Groupname" tag to share specific links. See EdCC Faculty Group Page.
  • Show students how to collect resources on Del.icio.us for group research projects.
  • Research topics using the Del.icio.us search. Let other people's tagging help you find items of interest!
Learning and teaching students how to use tags is also an exercise in organization and categorization of information. This is a great skill, and may be a fun way to explore a variety of topics and vocabularies for different disciplines - for example, what are all of the terms and keywords that are used to described your discipline or profession?