Thing 11: Tagging and Del.icio.us

I created an account on del.icio.us. I have never used anything like this before. It was one of the "buzz words" that I associate with the district's technology presentation last fall that I never got around to trying. I remember thinking that it would be a handy tool. Now that I've gotten my hands into it, I see that it really is. I used to cut & paste links to websites into emails that I would send myself back and forth from school to home and vice versa. This tool would make that entirely unnecessary. I don't use my favorites very often, because it seems like what I end up with is a long list of websites, none of which I can even remember what made them a "favorite". When I tried to "organize" my favorites, they would become hidden in folders , especially if it was used for more than one purpose, and I had no way of remembering my own "organizational system". Delicious also eliminates that problem. If I can give a site multiple tags (which actually make sense to me) and search by tag, I think I am on to something here. :) The thing I liked the most, though, was searching within delicious, to see what other people had saved and tagged as good websites. In less than three minutes, I found an excellent article, which I can use in class the first week of school to introduce the Scientific Method unit. Last year, I was searching high and low for anything usable, and eventually gave up. This is a tool that I intend to continue using, and will encourage students to use it as well.