Week 3 My delicious experience

Dear all,

As anticipated, this has been another eventful week. Last week we expanded our navigation skills. But what will one do with all the wonderful websites you manage to find? I used to store them in my Bookmarks bar or even save the whole page as a Web source (which is still advisable in case of, for instance articles in weekly magazines that after some time need subscription to be accessed). After installing Delicious, seeing that my bookmarks could be accessed from all the computers I use (and I use two of them interchangeably and intensely) filled me with joy. So, I have moved on in the sense of storage and retrieval of the stuff I find interesting, relevant and worth returning to.

Best of all, it is traceable by clicking on tags. Now, perhaps tagging was and is the most interesting part, as deciding on the tag is a bit of a creative process. It would be very frustrating if I could only use one tag per link, as I prefer multiple tags – they give me a better idea of the content of the bookmarked site. In future I will try to develop a convenient habit of adding more Notes, as this is another way to instantly get a better view of the document without opening it.

My impressions so far have been related to bookmarking. My following sentences are dedicated to the social aspect of social bookmarking, in other words, to my dear colleagues who have contributed their treasuries of websites to the delicious database. To see the variety of sources and key words that has arisen in such a short time was a revelation – it is hard to say whether language skill websites or teacher development resources proved to be more inspirational for inclusion into the bookmark database, but I cannot but mention Jonathan's links posted in Nicenet, which have been acknowledged by many of my colleagues. In addition, I was particularly curious about the way my colleagues dealt with tagging, coming up with different variations on the theme. And in a way, if I may say so, I have been trying to imagine the person, the teacher, my course mate, behind each collection of bookmarks, completely regardless of the quantity provided. I am reading how my colleagues feel about htis week's effort notonly through their words, but also images - Nina used a box of chocolates, for instance.

This is definitely something that could be used with students – at least having them access a delicious page I would create as the read-only version, containing tagged websites they would have to choose materials from for their reading, presentations and writing activities. That would keep them from using Google only, which is what they do when asked to find their own sources, and still keep them busy searching within a more concentrated list of resources, perhaps creating some kind of hotlists, as an additional activity. Another option is to have students identify a couple of bookmarked sources expressing differing points of view on the same subject and then use those arguments in a debate. I believe this is similar to what Jonathan means by 'online syllabi' to be used more autonomously by students. For instance, the issue of social networking could be discussed from several perspectives – its technical aspects, the convenience and benefits as opposed to its potential downsides. The different sources could further be compared in terms of style or even genre.

All of it starting from delicious.

I wish us all many good searches.

Best regards,

Andreja