Using Del.icio.us in Education
Prerequisites
1. Register an account with http://del.icio.us.
2. Get Firefox. Upgrade to the 2.0 version if you haven’t already.
3. Fetch the del.icio.us Bookmarks addon for Firefox.
I’m keeping the scope of this tutorial narrowed to Firefox 2.0 and the del.icio.us Bookmarks add-on from Yahoo, Inc. There are alternatives. Much of this can be accomplished with other add-ons, tools, and browsers. I’m sticking with these tools.
Unlearning
Warning: You now need to unlearn something that we’ve all held closely for the past 10 years. Bookmarks. We are going to turn control over to del.icio.us. This will make you very uncomfortable. It won’t feel right. It’s going to take a bit of time to unlearn and relearn. My initial trip into this world lasted about 10 minutes. Fight the urge to give up.
Configuration
Your old bookmarks are all gone. (Actually, del.icio.us has them, but they aren’t showing up like they used to.) Under the “Bookmarks” menu, check to see that you are logged into your own del.icio.us account.
Two new buttons. Just to the right of the “Home” button is a new “Search Your Bookmarks” followed by a “Tag” button.
Viewing your bookmarks is different than your traditional bookmarking. You now have the ability to perform a search on your bookmarking. You can also see sorting based on tags in this view. Tags are similar to the folders in traditional browser based bookmarks.
Bookmarking a website brings new options when integrated with del.icio.us. Notice that you can now add Notes. Use this space to give the bookmark your own flavor. It might be a personal note, a quote you enjoyed from the website, or a message to others about why you have bookmarked this website. Finally, we have the issue of tagging. del.icio.us usually provides a few examples that can be clicked on to populate the Tags field. You can add your own tags by typing into the tags window. The key here is to be short and messy. You will overthink and undertag your first few sites. Resist the tendency to be clean, orderly, and thoughtful during the tagging process. Messy is preferred at this point. (Note: Tags are separated by spaces in this process. New York needs to be tagged newyork to prevent the computer for interpreting this as tags for new & york.)
Go out and tag a number of sites at this point. Learn the flow. Resist the urge to be clean, orderly, and thoughtful. Visit, bookmark, and tag every search engine you can think of. Tag them “search” & “reference”. Visit, bookmark, and tag every library card catalog in your local area. Tag them “library” & “catalog”. Get busy. It’s time to populate your del.icio.us account with loads of bookmarks.
You should now have a few sites bookmarked and tagged. It’s time to jump to del.icio.us on the web and see what has happened.
Visit http://del.icio.us . Log in if necessary.
The main page of del.icio.us points you at what is popular at the moment. It’s a combination of “recent bookmarked things ” and “how many”. Social bookmarking. This is what the masses think is interesting on the web at this very moment.
Click “your bookmarks” in the upper left.
This is a snapshot of the sites you have bookmarked. Pretty simple. You have options to edit / share / delete on this screen. You can always go in here to clean up titles, add/delete tags, and annotate your bookmarks in the notes section. You can view your tags in a standard list format, or make it more visually interesting with the cloud format (see "tag options" on the lower right). As you begin tagging more and more sites, you will start to appreciate the “tag cloud” on the right. This is a visual representation of what tags and how often you are using particular tags.
Here’s where things start to get very interesting.
Click on “your network” in the upper left.
Your network is probably empty. Go ahead, add me to your network. Enter pedersoj and click “add” in the upper right. You now have a stream of my bookmarks entering your network page. You have a sense for what I’m reading. Your bookmarks + my bookmarks.
Here’s where things get viral. Notice that after you add me to your network, you have the option “view pedersoj’s network”. Go ahead. These are the streams of bookmarks I’m paying attention to.
Once you have added a host of other people to your network you can "deliver" links directly to them via the tags you add when you bookmark a site. So to send or highlight a bookmark to a specific user all you have to do is tag the site with for:xxxxxxxx (replace xx's with a del.ici.ous username) so to send me a link you think I would find interesting tag it for:tbarrett
It started with your bookmarks. Went to my bookmarks. Now you can begin searching through my network of bookmarks. If that person seems to be bookmarking things interesting to you, add them to your network. Choose your own adventure. Go back to my network or visit the networks of the new people you had added to your network.
You can see that we’ve quickly taken bookmarking and made it wickedly interesting. You now have a scan of what’s percolating in the minds of those in the edublogosphere. This is a look at their rawest layer of digital attention. If what you find is interesting, bookmark it. Add it to your stream.
Let this set in for a while. Lather, rinse, repeat. There is still more.
In the next part I’ll get back to the Firefox browser and learn a few tricks for managing this information. As you can imagine this can quickly be like drinking from the firehose of bookmarks. There are methods to simplify the madness. I’ll also introduce a few productivity hacks…different ways of looking at, thinking about, and using del.icio.us.
Educational Technology Sites Using Del.icio.us
http://edtechtalk.com/ The "Ed Tech Weekly" podcast uses del.icio.us as an aggregator and link community for their weekly updates on educational technology. Using del.icio.us, tag for:edtechtalk to add a site to their attention stream for inclusion in the show.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
John Pederson - http://www.pedersondesigns.com - My del.icio.us bookmarks tagged "del.icio.us" .If you are interesting in helping collaborate on this project, email me at pedersoj (@) gmail.com and I will send you an invitation giving access to contribute to this project!
Tom Barrett - http://tbarrett.edublogs.org
Feel free to add your name and blog address if you contribute! -Pedersoj 12/5/06, 10:35am