Yes, we all like to share something of ourselves...
sometimes it's a movie we've seen, a book we've read, or a website we've visited. If you've ever emailed someone a link to a favorite site, you've already partaken in a form of social bookmarking. Now, you're probably already familiar with regular bookmarking. Regular bookmarking is when you save frequently visited websites so they can be quickly and easily located later. The bookmark consists of the stored URL, sometimes with a description. In Firefox, they are called Bookmarks; in Internet Explorer, they are called Favorites. Unfortunately, since they are stored locally on your own computer, they are accessible only to you and only when you're at that particular computer.
With social bookmarking, rather than saving your favorite sites in your browser's Bookmarks or Favorites area, you save them using an online service. This makes them easily accessible and shareable from any computer since they are listed online. (If you'd rather not share a particular website, you can also choose to make your bookmark private. You can still access your favorites from any computer although no one else can). The software checks other users' Favorites and suggests websites related to your Favorites that may be of interest. Simply put, social bookmarking is a way of sharing Bookmarks or Favorites with others via the Internet. In addition, the user is given control to allocate tags or keywords to these sites and write helpful "about" notes.
Delicious has become one of the most popular social bookmarking services (especially with non-technical people) because of its simple way of identifying, organizing, classifying, and sharing sites. In addition, like most Web 2.0 services, it is free, and only requires the creation of an account with basic information (name, password, email address). Again, I recommend that you write down your username and password so you don't forget them! To see my delicious page, go to http://delicious.com/liliamurray.
Trek 2: Create your own delicious account:
- Go to http://delicious.com/
- Click the Join Now button, found towards upper right-hand corner
- Fill out the quick form and hit Register
- Save your delicious url, username and password in that Word doc. table!
- Next, install the bookmarking buttons by clicking on the green Add Buttons (if a yellow pop-up notice occurred towards the top of your screen, click the Allow button, then hit Install)
- Restart your computer to complete the installation
- Import your existing Bookmarks/ Favorites (choose the Easy Import and hit the Import Now button)
This will bring you to the following screen, where you can learn more about delicious:
--Click the green "Your Bookmarks" to go to your delicious page
--Click "How do I get started?" to learn the basics...it includes the following info. listed below:
Saving A New Bookmark
To make a new bookmark, just click the 'Tag' button, then add any tags or notes you want. Make sure you hit the Save button when you're done!!!
Searching And Browsing Your Bookmarks
To search or browse all of your bookmarks, just click the Bookmarks button and the Delicious sidebar will appear. This enables you to browse all your bookmarks or instantly search them by typing in the 'Search' box.
Trek 3: Play around with your delicious page
- Save some new sites
- Create Notes for them
- See how many other people saved the same website (it's the number in the blue box to the right of your bookmark). Click on it to get the list of people who also saved that website; click on a name, and you will see all of their shared bookmarks. You may discover similar interests...
Trek 4: Social Bookmarking in Education
Read the following article: Using del.icio.us in Education.
Several possible educational applications include (TU Delft, 2008):
- "The sharing of interesting sources and links within a project or project group, regardless of time or location.
- A user-friendly way of sharing information found (by teaching staff and by students). For example teaching staff can easily offer their articles on their own web pages or via an RSS feed, possibly combined with their blogs or blog entries by third parties. This allows students to stay in touch with interesting new articles and developments, collated by the teaching staff member.
- Establishing a central environment for collecting interesting links opens up multiple opportunities to discover interesting articles across a range of subject areas: Users can decide what interests them on the basis of tags.
- Collective and interactive sharing of sources (with teaching staff, researchers and among students, or even with other colleges or educational institutions). The software available online makes this easy to set up and extremely user-friendly.
- Locating teaching staff or students with similar interests and exchanging interesting information.
- Providing access to the teaching staff member or academic counsellor to the student’s online interests, by viewing the student’s bookmarks. It is also possible to include a list of these bookmarks in the portfolio.
- In projects where the Internet is used as a source of information, students can record which sources they have found and used. The teaching staff member can follow project group activities by subscribing to the RSS feed and even provide immediate feedback or advice on each new source added.
- To prepare lessons the teaching staff member can make available an online list of compulsory reading using a social bookmarking tool. Students then go to the link indicated to download the content using an RSS feed. The latter option also ensures users receive automatic messages when new bookmarks are added."
Trek 5: Write a Comment on this week's post.
- Was it "so easy a Klingon could do it?"
- How would you use delicious?
- Include your delicious url.
Works Cited
Grosseck, G. (2006). Using del.icio.us in education. Retrieved November 26, 2008 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/212002/Using-delicious-In-Education#document_metadata
TU Delft. (2008). What is (social) bookmarking? Retrieved November 26, 2008 from http://www.icto.tudelft.nl/nc/en/ict-in-education/social-bookmarking/article/0//518/?tx_ttnews[calendarYear]=2008&tx_ttnews[calendarMonth]=12&no_cache=1
The voyage continues March 2nd with "Set Phasers to Stun: Beyond Text."
2 comments:
I love the idea, and the introduction to delicious makes it appear very simple to use. Despite multiple tries, I haven't been successful in adding the buttons on my work computer; I think our computer technicians block adding or running programs for our computers' safety.
I can see delicious really helping in sharing teaching resources, partly because we're all pretty used to bookmarking useful sites anyway. I may try out using it in conjunction with a class blog or wiki for my students to share resources.
I know the College of Fine Arts & Humanities has downloading blocked on their work computers, so you're probably right in assuming yours does too. If you'd like to install those buttons (they're super convenient to have), I suggest asking your computer technician to install them for you. Like I said in my email, I use mine everyday!
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