Del.icio.us

=Lesson 5: Part 1= =Organizing the Flying Monkeys: Social Bookmarking with:= media type="custom" key="4101025"

Just when you were beginning to control your appetite, someone introduces you to del.icio.us. Believe me, it is just as addictive as chocolate! [|Del.icio.us] (pronounced "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. Many teachers bookmark certain web sites in a browser under Favorites on the toolbar. Over time these //favorites// can pile up and it becomes hard to find what we want, when we want it. Delicious helps solve this problem and others. If you have more than one computer which you work on, perhaps one at home and one at work, delicious can synchronize your bookmarks. Delicious is a great way to keep track of things on the web and it helps you to find links that interest you.
 * Step 1: What is Del.icio.us?**

Del.icio.us users each have a page on the Web site (http://del.icio.us/) where they keep bookmarks of sites they like. So right off the bat, the service is convenient because users can access their bookmarks from any computer connected to the Internet. Users are asked to add descriptive tags to each bookmark. For example, a user might label a page about Spain's soccer league with the tags "Spain" and "soccer." By tagging pages, users can classify them and organize them into groups, making it easier to navigate the list of links. Del.icio.us also lets users search their list by keywords, and organize the list chronologically by the date when links were added.

But del.icio.us' real appeal lies beyond being a personal, hosted bookmark manager. This is where the social aspect of the service comes in: Del.icio.us lets users see others' link collections. If a user finds someone's list compelling, he can subscribe to it and thus be notified when more bookmarks are added to it. Just like every user has a personal page in del.icio.us, each tag also has a page with a list of all the bookmarks it describes. Users can also subscribe to tag pages, such as "politics" or "music," and be alerted when items are added to them. Users can subscribe via RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds that are delivered to an external news reader or via del.icio.us' own internal system, in which notifications appear in what is called the user personal inbox. Moreover, each link contains a list of every user who has bookmarked it, so users can view who has bookmarked a link. Del.icio.us is structured in a way that compels users to browse others' lists, and discover pages they wouldn't have otherwise found. In short: Del.icio.us users are an online community, joined by their desire to share links to Web pages they like and find useful.

This short video explains the usage of Social Bookmarking through Del.icio.us in a clear and funny way. media type="youtube" key="x66lV7GOcNU" width="425" height="350"


 * Step 2: Advantages for the Classroom and Professional Use (From: [|The Role of Del.icio.us In Education])**
 * Collective intelligence
 * Flexibility
 * Creating dynamic learning communities
 * Support for lectures
 * Building learning communities
 * Research
 * Projects
 * Educational materials
 * Content management abilities
 * Professioanl Development


 * Step 3: Examples**


 * [|Alamedia County Public Library]
 * [|Assumption College for Sisters Library]
 * [|ArLinSNAP]
 * [|De.lici.us Libraries]

Del.icio.us is easy to use, but it lacks any serious kind of documentation. No problem for young people who have grown up using computers, but I like specific instructions. Otherwise, I feel lost. For those of you who need a security blanket, follow the steps listed below to create your very own del.icio.us account. [|Tagging] is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content (webpages, pictures & posts). Unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines (i.e.Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want.
 * Step 4: Create Your Own Del.icio.us Account**
 * 1) Go to: http://del.icio.us/register and sign up. You don’t have to put in an email, and signup is very easy and simple. Choose a username you can remember. That’s it!
 * 2) Go to: http://del.icio.us/post/, and choose your weapon of posting. I recommend at least using the pop-up one, so that your browsing experience is as uninterrupted as possible. However, if you’re one of those people that have a heart attack whenever you see a pop-up, use the standard one (second one down). Just drag whichever link you’ve chosen to your browser toolbar and you are ready to go!
 * 3) Browse to a favorite website. Click on your bookmark, whatever you named it. A pop up window will appear. In this window are several fields. The first is the url. The next is the description. Name this knowing that one day you may want to search for it again.

Tags make the magic happen. Now, the key here is to get out of thinking in terms of a folder hierarchy. Tags are not like folders; Tags are a whole different animal. You can put as many tags as you like on the website. What you’re aiming for here is two things. First, how will other people tag this, and how can I find this website easily later. Click on save, and you’ll just bookmarked and tagged your first site. You can group or pull websites up by tags. Spaces separate the tags, so if you absolutely must have a space, use the underscore instead. You can also delete tags if you want. As an example, if I found a great website on how to calculate the molar volume of a gas. I might tag the website as chemistry chemlabs gases, etc. 4. You can access your bookmarks by going to http://del.icio.us/username - replacing username with whatever your username is. You’ll see a very useful search box, your bookmarks descending chronologically by addition, and your tags on the right. You should see a few tags already, and to the left of those are the number of bookmarks in each tag. You can move between tags very easily, but you can also add tags. In other words, if you were in your chemistry tag and wanted to see everything that was tagged both chemistry and with gases, you would click on the word “add” beside gases. You can do this for as deep as the matching tags go. 5. Many users find that the real power of Del.icio.us is in the social network aspect, which allows you to see how other users have tagged similar links and also discover other websites that may be of interest to you. You can think of it as peering into another users’ filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool each user's filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network. There are no tags (at least that I’m aware of) on delicious that are private. This means you can see what everyone else has tagged.

6. Take a tour of the "popular" and "recent" links located on the top right of the page. Some very interesting and informative sites from around the internet can be found by searching through what others have tagged and recently visited.

[|Article: Using del.icio.us In Education]
 * Step 5: Educational Links and Uses**

1.  View the [|8 minute Del.icio.us tutorial] to get a good overview of its features. 2.  Take a look around Del.icio.us using the [|PLCMCL2] account that was created for this exercise. //Note: In this account you will find lots of resources that have been highlighted or used throughout the course of the Learning 2.0 program.// 3.  Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by a lot of other users. Can you see the comments they added about this bookmark or the tags that they used to categorize this reference?
 * Exercise: **