Thing #13 del.icio.us

After reviewing all these social networking bookmark services, there are two concepts which jump out. One concept is peer driven bookmarking, and the other is previewed websites.



Del.icio.us is far more than just an easy way to create bookmarks, though it certainly lends itself to this use and is obviously used heavily for this purpose. There is nothing wrong with this. But there is far more to it than this for the clever user. What is attractive to students and teachers is the "peer driven" concept of del.icio.us. Both can walk in the steps of other users and get quickly to sites of interest or importance. Student users who bookmark well and efficiently are forging new learning territory for their peers. For example, a good student bookmarker who locates and shares websites on the Civil War has helped countless other students more easily reach critical information for their learning and school work. The same holds true for teachers. If Texas teachers hone in on sites valuable for covering the TEKS and share those sites in del.icio.us, they save legwork.



The videos and tutorials make the point that practice makes more perfect. Everyone probably is a little sloppy at first, and must learn through experience. There is a definite learning curve to climb, but the results are worth it.



The second concept from Ma.gnolia is the idea of previewed websites. This dovetails easily into peer driven bookmarking. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of material available on any given interest, personal or academic. As an experienced educator, I still get boggled sometimes on how much is out there and must be sifted through. We've all attended meetings where cool websites are shared and demonstrated, and have seen lists of appropriate websites for various lessons and TEKS.



Social bookmarking takes all of this up a couple of levels by providing quick and easy recommendations that are easily shared.



One last point: freely chosen tags ... this is a recurring theme, a kind of progressive keyword indexing system. This can produce a lot of gems and useful tags.