Thoughts on Delicious

As I keep messing around with Delicious, I'm finding more aspects of it that I like. I believe it was Sarah E that said she was trying to use the inbox. I checked that out, and while I do wish you could send a bit of a message (if you can, I haven't figured it out), you can send bookmarks right to individual users. If the person uses Delicious, this is a great way to do things. If you send it to their email, then there are extra steps for them to get it to Delicious. If you send it right IN Delicious, they just have to add it.

However, that said, if someone does NOT have Delicious, I just noticed a "send" tab when I was tagging a link in Delicious. It offers options to email the link to someone, or post it to your Twitter account. These are nice options to have right in the Delicious program itself.

Also, in my network "friend" list, I see that it has sections and flags to denote who you are following, who is following you, and whether you are following each other. It's kind of nice to know those separations, and have a visual cue that someone is not seeing your link list, in case you specifically want them to. And, there is the option to make links private for yourself or hide them from some people, which can also be a bonus.

I may just have to make a personal account for Delicious and start transferring my long, jumbled, and untagged list of firefox bookmarks over there.

Also, for students, I see this as making things easier for them working between home and school. They can get online for a few minutes in one place, and have the sources that they found available in the other class. In addition, so often students are working on multiple projects at one time, this would be a great way for them to have one location to save links in, yet be able to tag them for the appropriate class. They don't need 4 different link locations, but can have one list and search it by "history project," "english project," etc. And if it's a group project, they can subscribe to each other's feeds, or share links between each other, which definitely helps to promote the 21st century skills of networking and collaboration.

Delicious vs. Diigo

So, this class finally got me to join up with Delicious and see what it's all about. I have friends that have been using this for a while, and talk about it all the time. I have to admit, my initial thought was "Ok, that's great, but I can put bookmarks in my own web browser, what's the big deal?" I DO very much like the buttons that have been placed in my navigation bar, but I had those before for local bookmarks in Firefox.

Well, the obvious benefit of Delicious being web-based is that I can get at my bookmarks everywhere. More and more, I'm seeing this as a bonus, because it's becoming so much easier to get access elsewhere. And more than once since we have started this online MSE-PD program, I've been in one place finding resources, and ended up having to email myself the links somewhere else to use them. Delicious would have been a perfect fix for that! I also see this as a bonus for doing any sort of research in class. I find it's best to give students a few "starter" websites when we do research, or if we are doing a web-quest, perhaps there are places they have to go. Delicious might be a way that I can set up this portion of an assignment from work or home, and then have the students access that list at each of their own computers--saving time, and paper (if I were to print them out instead).

When I first opened up Diigo, I was assuming it was going to be nearly the same as Delicious, but the introduction presented some really great tools that Delicious does not have. Being able to highlight, and having it save is great. And being able to highlight in multiple colors is even better. I may want students to separate their focus for any number of reasons, and different colors would be a real visual cue. In addition, I like the idea of the sticky notes. This would be both a way to get a students' attention, or to place a question for them right IN the reading. Or, if that website is being used as a resource, maybe a sticky note/highlighting could be used to find my/their way back to a specific quote of interest.

The part of Diigo that really struck me, was that you can take a screenshot of the website and have it saved along with your bookmark. For sites such as news, blogs, and even perhaps wikis, that can change frequently, having a picture of the specific screen that you found interesting would be really useful. Sharing news coverage of a current even with a class, or even just showing something "cool" or "fun" to friends would be made so much easier this way.

I'm looking forward to using Delicious as I have already set up my account and a few bookmarks, but I think that I may just have to try Diigo out as well. There seem to be a few additional features on Diigo that would be very worthwhile--both in personal and professional use. The fact that both offer the option to network with other users is a big plus.

I think, even if these are not tools that I could use IN school, due to technology restrictions, these would be something that I will look into as resources for students to peruse outside of school. It would certainly be easy enough to set up a link on a school webpage, or have them set up accounts if they were interested. They could check from home, and find a tagged, relevant list of web resources waiting for them.

New blog to follow/Learning to use Delicious

While I was looking for my Wiki, I happened to come across the blog Vamonos. A quick glance shows that it looks promising, and as of today, is moving from being a Blogger journal, to residing at http://lisibo.co.uk/. This blog seems to be fairly active, and focused on Spanish teaching and learning, sharing resources, videos, and ideas.

Also, with the addition of the wiki and this new blog to my PLN, I am learning to use the "Tag" feature from Delicious in my Firefox toolbar, to add these links to my list on Delicious.