Thing 20 Bookmarking with del.icio.us

Under the user name of rebeccast I uploaded all 100 or so favorites from my home computer to the del.icio.us site and edited each to add a tag, deleting some that are no longer of use to me. I then added a few sites that I had not bookmarked before, but could not do so automatically even though the buttons appear on my toolbar. Maybe after I have logged off and then back on again they will be fully functional. I used the copy and paste method to add the last few sites.

Now instead of scrolling through the mishmash of favorites I can choose one of the many tags I used to find the site(s) I want.

It was interesting to see that some of my favorites were already bookmarked by thousands of people and others by none or just a few. Unlike the information in the tutorial, my imported sites were all private until I unchecked a box in the editing window.

This would be a great way to collaborate with other teachers. All the teachers attending the TAH grant workshop that I am in could set up a single account for the group to use to add useful websites we have found. In our own schools we could set up accounts by subject matter or grade. I think having one account for several of us to share would be simpler than sharing user names or searching all the bookmarks in del.icio.us. Since it is so easy to add sites and to add descriptions, sharing resources by using this social bookmarking would be as easy as bookmarking for my own use, and more accessible because of the tags. Groups setting up accounts could agree to certain tags they would use, adding others as needed. I could see suggesting to one of the learning networks that I joined that we set up a del.icio.us account for the group to use.

Why does it seem that these later tools are more useful than some of the earlier ones? Does that mean we're learning?