del.icio.us

I think that del.icio.us has a lot of potential uses that I didn’t fully tap into yet.

As I get more into the tool, I’ll probably go back and add some more tags to some of my links. I found myself often using the tags recommended. Additionally, I often used really broad tags, like “education.” I’m not sure yet if broader tags are better than narrower ones. I can see the advantages of both. By searching for a broad tag, I’m able to get a lot of results and find some really unique things. But, by doing so, I end up having to sort through a lot of results. Conversely, narrower tags would help me find something precise, but I ran into problems with this. I ended up not getting many results and having to start a search over. I keep using “education” as a tag. I think, though, that the tag needs to be more specific to help other users out.

I tried to add some annotations to my links. Rather than summarizing the site, I often tried to tell a viewer what s/he could expect. For example, I might say something like, “This is a great resource for teaching literature. There are multiple sample activities and lessons for hundreds of different texts.”

I can see myself using Diigo, rather than del.icio.us, with students. I really like all of the extra tools that Diigo has. I plan on using/teaching the highlighting and summarizing tools with students. Additionally, they’ll need help with tagging articles that they find for their individual lists. (I’m thinking of using Diigo for a research assignment so students can share sources.) I think the best way to teach students how to tag (better than I’ve been doing!) is to get them to think of broad categories and then narrow categories for their tags. For example, if a student tags an article about using solar power to power a vehicle, we could talk about a hierarchy of categories to describe the subject. Example: Science, climate change, alternative energy sources, and solar power would all be appropriate tags- starting out broad, and then narrowing in.

As I’m still on maternity leave, I haven’t been as active with this tool as I think I’ll eventually become. For one, I really like the idea of being able to utilize my “favorites” from multiple computers. Second, I think that sharing bookmarks will come in handy when I’m teaching my history classes. I’m always digging through things to find really great, interesting websites for the students. Ideally, I’ll be able to find other American history teachers on del.icio.us and we can share our resources.