More and More del.icio.us

Del.icio.us keeps growing and the most recent growth has been in education, with teachers and librarians from K-12 to college. Del.icio.us is the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies' number one tool of 2008. In a post on the del.icio.us blog, Britta Gustafson shares her favorite bookmarks on the use of del.icio.us in education:

• In a Library Journal article from 2007, Melissa Rethlefsen writes of librarians using del.icio.us to "bridge the gap between the library's need to offer authoritative, well-organized information and their patrons' web experience." Often, librarians turn to del.icio.us and similar tools to guide library users to quality sources on the Web and away from what one librarian called "unedited and ill-founded and repetitive single-page resources." Some librarians use tag clouds as replacements for subject guides, making it easier for less computer-savvy librarians to participate in highlighting library collections and resources. Del.icio.us links can also be centered around current news topics or items for an in-class or homework project. "Task tagging" allows librarians or teachers to bundle tags for particular classes, topics or projects. Many of these ideas and uses are great for middle school classrooms and libraries. And because it is Web-based, teachers, students, and librarians can have access to their bookmarks wherever they are.

• In "Tag--You're Delicious!," posted at Learning.now, Andy Carvin gives a rundown for newbies what del.icio.us is, how it works and what you can do with it. He discusses the portability and the power of tagging for personal use and networking, using his blog and del.icio.us account links as examples.

• Classroom 2.0 has a wiki on social bookmarking. One link will bring you to an ongoing Classroom 2.0 discussion board on using social bookmarking in teaching. Lesson plans are available to show how del.icio.us can be used with students, including guidance on teaching them personal safety and privacy. There's also a list of links to social bookmarking sites other than del.icio.us, including Edutagger, made specifically for K-12 use. A list of links offers up articles and blog posts on how and why to use social bookmarking with your classes.

TeachingHacks.com also has a recommended wiki page on using del.icio.us. (It is temporarily unavailable.) With the openness and potential of social bookmarking, we can show students that learning is not confined to four walls or childhood and that expert opinions can be found in typical and not-so-typical places. And it has excellent homeschooling or summer use.

How do you use social bookmarking? Do you prefer del.icio.us over other options like Furl or Mag.nolia? What about Diigo, which combines social bookmarking with highlighting and sticky notes?

SOURCE: "Who says librarians (and teachers) don't like tags?" 3/12/08
SOURCE: "Tags Help Make Libraries Del.icio.us" 9/15/07
photo: screencapture of the del.icio.us homepage