Bit By Bit

Reflection on:

Personal Professional Development
“Social Bookmarking, Using Del.icio.us”

by Jeff Utecht

I was drawn to this workshop for two main reasons. One, I am always trying to find a way to better use Del.icio.us (I fear my bookmarks/tags are quite a mess), and Two, Cheryl and I were just talking about how Del.icio.us would be a great way to get people on board with Web 2.0. This presentation is excellent and I will direct teachers to it often. (Thank you, Jeff!)

I am currently using many Social Bookmarking services, though most of them feed into Del.icio.us. My current fave is Clipmarks (where I can easily see a visual representation of what I’ve clipped), and it feeds very nicely into Del.icio.us.

The way I want to approach Del.icio.us with teachers, is to first show them how a lot of their work is already completed for them. In other words, let’s say that they are about to teach a unit on Ellis Island. If they do a search on Del.icio.us, they will probably find some great links, but more importantly, they will be able to follow those links back to specific educators, who probably have already found all the links that they will need for the unit.

Once they understand how powerful this is (and what a goldmine), then I can introduce them to the potential of RSS! This was the “aha” moment for me; that using Del.icio.us would be the best way to explain why a teacher would want to use RSS.

Alice Barr has an excellent idea of how to teach tagging by using this great game called “Apples to Apples”. I’ll ask her to explain it on our next Seedlings.