I discovered Delicious.com about 7 months ago. It has made organizing my teaching life far easier and as a result added to my classroom. If you are not familiar with Delicious it works like this: it allows you to get to your bookmarks from any computer, anytime, anywhere.
To get started download an add on for Delicious on your browser and start bookmarking. If you want to access your bookmarks from another computer, you can do it in 2 ways: 1) You can sign in to Delicious to access or 2) You can make your bookmarks public and just type the web address of your bookmarks. Once you type the address you are off and running.
The way I use Delicious is quite simple. Since I do a lot of my work at home, I often bookmark at home and then access those bookmarks at school. For example, if there are several youtube videos I want to show students on Planets, I bookmark them at home and then load them when I go to school in the morning. Moreover, you can open each bookmark in a different tab or window. I find that convenient. Just right click on the bookmark and choose the option you want.
The way of organizing Delicious bookmarks is different from the standard practice of browsers. Delicious does not use the standard “create a folder” format. Instead you tag your bookmark. You can tag your bookmarks with as many tags as you wish. At first I found this awkward because I was used to folders. However, being able to give bookmarks many tags allows for you to access a bookmark easier. It is true when Delicious says “Tag your bookmarks. Collections will naturally emerge.”
I hope this has helped you to understand Delicious. I welcome any comments adding to the benefits of Delicious.
I haven't used Delicious that much, but this definitely makes me want to check it out again (the tags intrigue me).
ReplyDeleteThanks!
Thanks for your comment Fiona. Indeed, the tags are intriguing. Thanks for reading.
ReplyDeleteAnother added feature of Delicious is the social networking. One can invite others to join on the site for the purpose of sharing bookmarks. I have personally bookmarked about 500 Edu sites. I have 91 educators in my DELICIOUS network. This gives me access to 123,000 educational bookmarked sites. A Google search will give me 10,000 sites to check out. A Delicious search may give me 10 bookmarked sites all checked out and used by educators.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information, Tom. I had no idea that was possible! I am gonna have to get busy making use of this new information. Cheers.--Brian
ReplyDeleteI tag things both educational and interesting/intriguing. I encourage parents to browse what I've found. Delicious is another communication conduit to the home of my students.
ReplyDeleteI used a single class Delicious account with my students (grade 9) last year. I spent a few minutes with each class teaching them a common tagging system, then sent them on their way to conduct research on a variety of topics. The results were pretty impressive as students were able to search for connections among seemingly unrelated people based on the tags they used. At the end of the year, one of the students summed it up best when she said that Delicious may not be the most fun of the websites we used in class (Wordle & Glogster tied for that honor), but it is the most helpful.
ReplyDeleteMany educators (including myself) use @Diigo for social bookmarking. I like it for its text highlighting feature and nice widget, among other things. Diigo bookmarks may also be automatically sent to Delicious, so it's easy to maintain a Delicious set without any extra effort. I like it when things work together like that.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments. I am learning so much more about Delicious as well as Diigo with this little blog post.
ReplyDeleteI love delicious too. Any chance you'd put a you're user name on this blog so people could follow you there? I found you on Twitter because of your great links there. My sister is a new Math teacher, and I'm always looking for sites for her (I'm a language person myself).
ReplyDeleteIndeed leslie. delicious.com/neufarama
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind comments.
I"m with skipvia and went from a delicious account to a diigo one that feeds my delicious account. In addition to the commenting, highlighting, peer editing, guided reading features that it can bring to my students, I also belong to related educational groups and get a daily digest email with the great sites others have found that are part of that group.
ReplyDeleteYeah! I love using that to help organize. Enjoy the blog!
ReplyDeleteI am a delicious user, but I've never used it with my students. Does anyone have tips on how to make a collaborative delicious space for my students to tag relevant sites? Any help is greatly appreciated!
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