jmathiesen » TIE08BreakoutDelicious

TIE 08 Breakout Presentation (Tuesday 11:30am-12:25pm) Room 1

Session Description:
Bring your laptop to get started with social bookmarking. Participants will be introduced to the concept of social bookmarking and if you BYOL (bring your own laptop) you will get step-by-step instructions to get started with this Web 2.0 tool so that you can store, share and discover a multitude of terrific web resources. With a little help it is easy to get started with Del.icio.us -- you will find it useful and immediately applicable for personal and classroom use.

What is Social Networking?

A great video introduction to social networking.
What do you know about social networking?
Learn more about social networking on wikipedia.

What is De.licio.us? and how is it a form of social networking?

A great video introduction to social bookmarking.

De.licio.us is a social bookmarking tool. On the surface using De.licio.us is alot like saving favorites on your computer. But this is a little different because you are saving them to a service that is not on your computer. So if your computer crashes or your computer needs to be re-imaged, you can still log into your De.licio.us account from any computer and have your favorites. When you save your favorites on De.licio.us, or bookmark them, you can also tag them. Tagging lets you assign lables to your favorite website - this helps you stay organized. For instance I could save this website http://readwritethink.org/ and tag it with a label like "lessons" or several labels such as "lessons, reading, resources, classroom, collaboration, writing". In this way, I will know the website was useful to me in a way that is specific to my labels or tags. (Note: labels need to be one continuous word.)

The big difference between saving your favorites on your computer and saving them to de.licio.us is that in de.licio.us you are saving them in an environment with thousands of other people. You can network with others who have saved the same sites. For instance, when I save the readwritethink site above I see that 1365 other people have saved it - do you think they might have some other sites I might like? I can go see their list of favorites and their tags. Another person who thinks readwritethink is great, will most likely have other websites that are of interest to me. I can add this person to my "network" and check in on their favorites whenever I want.

How can you get started with De.licio.us?

STEP 1: Register (go to de.licio.us click on "get started")
STEP 2: Install Buttons (these are critical to good functionality)

STEP 3: Start tagging websites (use your "tag" button)
STEP 4: Start a network

How can social bookmarking and De.licio.us be used in education?

Teachers Networking With Teachers - You can put other teachers who are using de.licio.us in your network. Whenever they tag resources, it's like they are saving them for you as well. Imagine all the social studies teachers in South Dakota networked together through social bookmarking. When one finds a great teaching resource, they all have access (including notes provided by the original tagger).

Teachers Networking with Students - Instead of spending your evenings and weekends finding great resources on the internet, have your students do it!! Have your students create de.licio.us accounts, put them in your network. "Here is your homework biology class. Tonight at home, or in the library, find one website that will help us all better understand the process of photosynthesis. When you tag the site be sure to label it 'photosynthesis' and 'Bio2'. Additionally in the notes section of your tag, write three complete sentences about why this would be a good resource." The next morning you should have 20-25 web resources - some of them are bound to be great!

Teachers Networking with Professional Development Resources - Last summer I attended the International Curriculum Mapping Institute in Park City, Utah. As I sat in session with my laptop, I tagged sites I wanted to revisit or share with my colleagues. I labeled them "cmi2007".

"Linkroll" Your Tags to Students - de.licio.us allows you to create code that can be embedded in your wiki, blog or website. This means the items you tag for "Bio2" will dynamically roll into your wiki, blog or website. You can go to this page on de.licio.us to create a linkroll http://del.icio.us/help/linkrolls.

Visit this blog to see an example of a linkroll in a blog. This blog was created just to showcase some of the things you can add to a blog.

Here is an example of a linkroll in a wiki. When I tag more sites in delicious, they are automatically updated on this page. I never have to copy and paste websites and distribute them on paper.

Is De.licio.us the only way to participate in social bookmarking?

No, there are a variety of other Web 2.0 application that allow you to perform similiar processes. Check these out sometime: