Our technology facilitator at school encouraged us to use I Keep Bookmarks, but I saw it as just one more thing I had to do. Not only that, but I wasn’t really in the mood that day to reorganize the bookmarked sites on my computer, so memory lapsed and social bookmarking didn’t happen for me.

As of this week, I now have a Delicious account. It was so simple to set up and I love that I now have these sites organized by categories. Furthermore, I like that I can see other sites I might want to check out by looking at someone else’s bookmarks that is connected to one of my bookmarks. I find that to be even more helpful than googling a topic I might be searching. For instance, I have a bookmark about the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia because I have planned a canoeing trip there. It’s neat to see what other trips I might could find based on the bookmarks that someone else had tagged along with tagging the same site I had about the Okefenokee Swamp.

As for classroom application, I see much use in a site like Delicious where I could tag certain websites for my students to have easy access to. Moreover, I like that you can access these bookmarks from any computer instead of just my personal laptop…a very convenient feature! Of course, that feature also extends into the homes of my students or at the public library or any computer that a student might be on to complete an assignment. I think students would also find social bookmarking helpful when working in a group on a research project. Each group member could tag the sites he/she was using for their part of the project, and all group members would have access to them.

Delicious is definitely something new that I will continue to use beyond this class. I also plan to incorporate it into my Language Arts classroom this year. I want to set up a separate Delicious account and link it to my class website so parents and students will have access to sites I think they would be interested in and find useful.

Advertisement