NSW LearnScope Blog & Podcast

I’m trying to get my head around why anyone would find del.icio.us threatening, but I’m hearing that it may be the case.
For me, it’s the best thing since…. mmm…. being able to buy REAL bread again, and certainly one of the BEST social web tools there is. Delicious and FlickR have been the two tools that are most readily embraced by teachers in my experience. They’re the ones that people see immediate use for.

Wikipedia describes delicious as a ‘non-hierarchical keyword categorization system … where users can tag each of their bookmarks with a number of freely chosen keywords (cf. folksonomy)’. It enables a ‘combined view of everyone’s bookmarks with a given tag’.

I can’t remember the last time I used browser based bookmarking/favourites. Why would I? I work on 2 computers each day and need to access favourites from both; if I left my job tomorrow all my favourite sites would still be accessible; I value the opinion of my networked colleagues in identifying worthwhile resources/reads and I am happy to share good sites I have identified with others.

[image from thefangmonster of the del.icio.us network explorer tool]

In NSW LearnScope we use delicious to contribute to our networked learning each year. Good sites and resources are tagged nswlearnscope and nswlearnscope07, as well as other relevant key words. By searching for nswlearnscope07 I can see what our LearnScope community is reading this year. By searching podcasting (for example) I can locate my own saved sites along with those valued by the global community. If I search Google I access sponsored sites, ads etc and sift through to find anything of value; if I search delicious what appears are those sites assessed as being of value by people like me internationally.

It’s all about give and take. The few sites I locate and far outweighed by the thousands of others openly shared with me by others.

Personal sites can be kept private but I’ve never used the option…. either I wear my heart on my sleeve or have a good memory eh :> I really don’t care that people know I dream of travel, that I love beautiful things etc ….

If you’d like to join us in sharing the wealth of online e-learning spaces and places, register with delicious and use our nswlearnscope07 tag. Decide on a team tag to use (eg. tareecrew) so you can identify your own shared sites, and other tags that will enable you to connect with a global community on relevant content. Your learning, work and life will be all the richer for doing so.