Using Del.icio.us: for bookmarking and networking

[Eduardo Peirano]

I am a Del.icio.us fan . Eraser, Gabriela Grosseck and Claudia Ceraso also use Del.icio.us. They are in my del.icio.us network and they became my friends by sharing our bookmarks.

I have posted in my Onlinesapiens Blog about Del.icio.us:

1- Using Del.icio.us in Education
2- Using Del.icio.us for Blogging

Read these posts and ask for help if there is anything that you do not understand

[Eduardo Peirano]

I have also played with Edtags, http://edtags.org/ My bookmarks, http://edtags.org/bookmarks.php/emapey
You can tag more than one word. Few people use Edtags. It is not good for networking

[Claude Almansi]

I'm a del.icio.us fan too. I also experimented with Clipmarks.com, which allows you to quote a longer portion of a page, and also to automatically bookmark the clipmark in del.icio.us and other social bookmarking sites. I was particularly interested in the possibility of having excerpts from several pages in one clipmark, because of the possibility of adding a bibliographical reference generated with David Warlick's Citation Machine (1).

And I was particularly interested in this possibility for dyslexic students: computers are a huge help in producing a correct bibliography, compared to the nightmare of tipp-exing typos on multiple carbon copies it was with a typewriter. Nevertheless, it remains a hassle for dyslexic students - and I had just met after years a former dyslexic high school student who is now doing an M.A. But then I discovered the Zotero referencing extension for Firefox, which is far more handy than my "Web page +Citation Machine+Clipmark" work around, so I showed him Zotero instead. Still, I guess Clipmarks might be useful in some cases.

(1) Example: the S. Downes on Teaching with Games - APA ref clipmark. See also the post and comments Nel nuovo web è importante citare le fonti? ("In the new web, does source indication matter?" - Nov. 7, 2006) on Luca Mascaro's blog: web continuation of a several hour discussion of the Noi Media work group at a local pub.

[Gabriela Grosseck]

I am a del.icio.us user too. Recently I finished a paper (a short one in English and a longer one in Romanian) about del.icio.us. Here's the link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/212002/USING-DEL-ICIO-US-in-education-

[Britt Watwood]

Gabriela:

Excellent paper! While I have been an individual user for about 6 months, I plan to use del.icio.us for the first time with my graduate students this fall. I will have a functional tab unique to my class, and have students share their web research with me and others through delicious. Would appreciate any suggestions you might have on making this a good experience for my students (who are all K-12 teachers by the way).

Britt

[Gabriela Grosseck]

Hi Britt

I love to use del.icio.us especially as a "warehouse" of resources. My students are in the first year of college and most of them don't have digital skills. So I am trying to teach them del.icio.us for gathering information and to learn the benfits of community of practice.
I also explain them how to use different script (from GreaseMonkey, mainly) for del.icio.us as deliwin or posting directly from Google Reader.
Recently I am working with them with diigo and TrailFire.
Teaching about Web 2.0 it depends a lot about the level of digital literacy of your students.
Best wishes

[Lucy Mathers]

Thanks - I have a dyspraxic & dyslexic friend doing a Ph.D. and I told her about del.icio.us just yesterday, but it sounds like Zotero might be more suitable. (She is not getting on well with EndNote!)

[Britt Watwood]

Jeff Nugent and I are presenting at JMU's 4th Annual Teaching with Technology Conference tomorrow on "Exploring Instructional Uses of Social Bookmarking". In examining how my students did (and did not) take to del.icio.us, we found that:

- The initial uptake varied widely and not necessarily along computer literacy lines
- A core group of students began to use del.icio.us outside the bounds of the class, adding professional and personal links, and sharing them with others
- As a faculty member, I found that I gained insights into my students, which aided in building community.

Thought y'all would be interested!

Britt

[Gabriela Grosseck]

Hi Britt!

Is there any chance to share your results in the journal of my university, Journal of Social Informatics? We will have a special issue in December focused on Web 2.0.

Gabriela

[Britt Watwood]

I would have to write it up...but would like to. When is the due date?

Britt

[Gabriela Grosseck]

Thanks. The journal has two issues each year. The due date are 5 June and 5 December. So there is time.

[Britt Watwood]

For those of us who are delicious junkies, you might like a couple of interesting applications that use delicious.

The first is at Extispicious and gives you a neat wordcloud based on your delicious account (though Eduardo's looks better than mine!).

The second - Delicious Network Explorer -lets you "see" the relationships between you and other delicious users. Warning - it is addictive! For instance, I can enter my delicious username, see my network, then click on Eduardo's and see his (and our shared friends)...and then click on some of them ... opening up new networking possibilities!

Try them out!

Britt

[kevhickeyuk]

In our organisation we tried using a single Del.icio.us account for us all to use, but this caused problems as different people would use slightly different tags, and it all got out of hand. We decided for this tipe of collaburation Furl.net is better as it uses a more structured tagging system.

Although I still prefer Del.icio.us for individual use.