Week #6 Thing 13

I tried to view the tutorial on del.icio.us but the site is down right now. I'll try again tomorrow.

I created my own del.icio.us account. So far I've just added tags from my own browser's bookmarks. You can see my tags here:

http://del.icio.us/lizbade

I wish I would have used del.icio.us instead of my browser's bookmark feature long ago because just last week I lost all of my bookmarks on my computer. A pop-up window asked me if I wanted to use Firefox as my default browser...well I clicked yes because that is what I was using. Somehow after I clicked yes, it started a new Firefox for me and I couldn't recover my many, many bookmarks!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dang!!!

But with del.icio.us I can use any computer anywhere in the world and see my tags.

We have a teacher at our high school that used del.icio.us with her students for a human rights violation project. The teacher searched the internet and tagged the sites that she thought would be useful. I think it was a helpful plan but for first time users, I think that the del.icio.us format is a bit confusing. (I know some kids were confused as to how to navigate through it.) We should have probably presented a mini-lesson on how to use del.icio.us. Or at least have a cheat sheet for them to refer to.

The other drawback that I thought of while using this tool with the students was that they were not actually using their own searching skills and strategies. (I presented a lesson on evaluating websites earlier.) If a teacher tags good sites for kids, they are not actually practicing their internet evaluation skills. On the other hand, the students didn't exclusively use the teacher's tags so I guess all was not lost!!!

All in all, a very useful tool.