Reflecting on Delicious

One of the many web 2.0 tools that I have acquired a (professional) account for this semester is the social bookmarking site, Delicious. It is a site that many of my friends have been using for a while, but I honestly couldn't be bothered to check out. It didn't seem all that worth it to have another place with all my bookmarks stored, when I use my own computer most of the time, and already had them listed here. However, I think that this may be a tool I will continue to use, and work on developing a better system for using. Already I can see the benefit in not having to email myself links back and forth between school and work, as I have been known to do!

In going back over the set of links accumulated by myself and my classmates, I see many links that I will be adding to my own set of bookmarks. Specifically, I am interested in many of the "how to" links for our web 2.0 tools and the sites that are titled along the lines of "X number of ways to engage students with 'this' web 2.0" tool. So often, it's a great stepping stone to start using something new, with suggestions from others as a basis. Then, once you and the students develop some familiarity with the tool, creativity and innovation come next. And, of course, given that I have a fellow Foreign Language teacher in the class, I am interested in a lot of Trish's links. Being the only Foreign Language teacher at the high school level in my district, with a part-time colleague at the middle school that I do not see as often as I would like, any resources that I can get from, and share with, others are great!

Tags are something that I think I am still developing as we near the end of this course. I know what they are, and how to create them, and I see them as invaluable in finding sources, searching my own blog entries and links, and developing connections throughout the whole of my PLN, but I think I often tend to be either too specific, or too wordy with my tags. I have entries and links with one word on them, and others with six or seven. I'm still working on figuring out the main concepts that I will want to look for later (which seems like it should be easy, doesn't it?). I have definitely tried to be consistent with my tags, and the fact that most data entry boxes for tags have a memory for what you have previously typed is exceptionally helpful. I find myself trying to tag the big concept of the blog or link, often with something from the title, as well as using tags that are required for class, and common amongst other people tagging similar items. (The suggestions on Delicious have come in handy more than once, and have helped increase my "tag vocabulary".) I have changed my mind about the tags I'm using, either to simplify or be more specific for myself, or because I saw what others were using, and it seemed more logical. Being consistent seems the best idea to me, as does finding the main idea of what you are tagging. While more tags help something to be found in more ways, a few accurate tags seem like a better idea than multiple vague tags. This would be something that I would try and impart to students. The two important ideas in tagging are consistency and accuracy.

Tag bundles are something that I did not use very much, but I did set up a bundle titled "class" where I combined everything that I tagged with both "uwwlibmedia" and "web2.0" into one group. This helped me to organize the links that I had bookmarked for class. That way I knew how many links I had shared, and which categories I had bookmarked most for my web 2.0 wiki page. I see tag bundles being useful in education for projects. Not all websites related to one research project will carry the same tags, as they might be for different areas of the project. Or, perhaps, a teacher/student will realize that links they had previously marked for something else are now relevant for a new set of research. By making a new bundle, they can combine the sets of links that they think they will work with, and they can click on that bundle to get the list up, instead of having to search for each tag separately. A few minutes to set up a bundle will save time when sharing links, and when returning to the list to find additional links.

My tag cloud at this point is not very large. The class tags of "uwwlibmedia" and "web2.0" are the dominant tags, but after that I have "technology," "flickr," "video," and "youtube." It gives a visual representation that my Delicious use has thus far been dominated by work for this current class. I would like to broaden that, and start to get some content area tags showing more prominently. I'm just starting with Delicious, and it may be interesting to see where my tags, clouds, bundles, lists, subscriptions, and networks grow from here.

Annotations are a great feature on Delicious! When you get the link for a page and the title shows up in your bookmark, it only gives you a basic understanding of what is on the web page. So often, we bookmark sites because there is a specific example, link, video, or other small piece of information on the page, that we may forget about that when we go back days, weeks, or months later. Even if it was very generic, I found myself jotting a note down every time I made a link. That way, I can get into the habit, and when there is something small and hidden on a page that I want to revisit, I will remember to write about it.

Using Delicious to connect with others that have similar interests is actually quite easy. The most basic way to go about this is to do a search for links of interest and find users who have made those links, or to click on your more frequent tags and see who else is using them. One of the people that I found when searching for Foreign Language tags ended up being the person who runs the Wiki that I had joined a few weeks ago. She uses the same username on both sites, and I followed her on Delicious. She is constantly adding activities relating to both Spanish and Foreign Language teaching, and even following someone who teaches a different language can yield activities and ideas that can easily be transferred. Once I found this person, I added her to my network. I like that your network list shows up on the side of the Delicious page, so that you can see who you are following, as well as who is following you (indicated by flags next to usernames). This allows you the chance to go right to a person's feed, by clicking on their username. In addition, you can use the messenger to share links personally with another user that you think will find them of particular interest. (I also really like that the tagging/bookmarking data entry box has a box to "share" with others right away. It's easy to see a site and thing "Oh! She'll love this." And you can enter that in, and send it to them right away. It makes the site that much more social, that you can share links within it, instead of having to bookmark them and then email the person to go look.)

I think that Delicious affords a great opportunity for sharing lists of links with others, whether it be students, colleagues, or friends. Common tags will allow groups to subscribe to certain sets of links, and tag bundles can put related groups of links together. Creating these common tags and subscriptions would be an excellent way for students to collaboratively build up a set of resources for a project, and for a teacher to give the students a base set of sites to begin with. Teachers could make a subscription/tag that would allow them to share resources amongst each other in a department, building, or district. And friends can easily share links on common interests. And, as I mentioned before, using the message feature on Delicious allows you to send a link to an individual--whether it be a link to a certain content-area specific page for a colleague, or a site that pertains to a particular student's project, or a link that a friend would find really entertaining. The collaborative nature of Delicious allows people to connect, share, and work in groups, and any time that you can do one step and have multiple people see it, it helps everyone out.

(As a sidenote, I happened to be trying to use Delicious at school today (I must admit, for the first time) and I realized that I am unable to access it. When I signed up, it sent me to sign in via Yahoo, which I never thought about as I was doing it. However, being predominantly thought of for games and email, Yahoo is blocked at school. So, because I have to use that briefly to get into Delicious, I am unable to use Delicious at the moment at work. I think I will have to ask our tech guy about that, and see if he can unblock Yahoo on my computer, as I do have a specific, academic reason for the request.)