-I registered on Delicious.com and then searched about a topic that I did for Assignment #2. I searched for ‘Canadian Animals’ using Google. Then I saved the interesting ones in my Delicious.com account. I also made a stack for these URLs. I searched for this term because I thought it would be helpful to experiment with a topic that I will use in the next year or so in my Teacher-Librarian job.
-I found it a bit challenging at first to figure out how to save the Delicious link under my Favourites Tool Bar. But once I did, I found it easy to just click on it once I found a website that I liked.
-I like that on Delicious.com there is an option to add an image and more detail to the link before I save it. I also like that I can add some tags to the link and figure out what stack it should go in. The more detail the better because if a teacher or student is trying to find a relevant link or I am trying to find it, then technically it should be easier because all this detail is given with the link.
-I had a Teacher-Librarian share with me today that she was going to teach Gr.6 students today using a website that she had found but then she couldn’t find the website when it came time to teach. I wonder if she had saved the link in an account like delicious.com, if she would have had more luck? She wasn’t sure if she had written the wrong URL down or if the website itself was down.
-I can see that there is so much more I can do with this delicious website but I will have to explore it more at a later date, i.e. add more stacks to my account, make websites public or private, add more tags, and figure out how to use the “Feeds” tab so that I can follow other stacks and profiles. That sounds interesting!
-I remember using a ‘basic’ form of folksonomy when I was younger. I would bookmark websites while I was using my Internet Explorer and I would be prompted to name it and then it would be saved into a folder. I remember though when I got a virus on my computer, I lost all those bookmarked pages when my laptop had to be formatted. This is why I like the idea of being able to tag URLs and keep it out there on the virtual web. But maybe I should use both: have the bookmarked pages on my Internet Explorer program (by clicking on the star in the top right corner) as well as on the web (on Delicious.com), in case one of them goes down or gets deleted.
-I can see how folksonomy websites would be useful and helpful. If I can use this then I can know what websites I visited that I liked and are relevant to me and save them to one place so that I don’t have to stop my surfing and write the URL address down. I like that they are stored by date visited because then if I am thinking that I liked a website that I visited last week, I can go back to that day to see what websites I surfed.
-I can see folksonomy programs being useful for students doing research. If they need to go back and re-read something or to write a bibliography for it or to cite an image they found that’s useful to their research, they are able to find it because they saved it into their account, i.e. their delicious account.
-Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the teachers used folksonomy-based systems to organize their resources and then other teachers could access them and vice versa? That would help so much. It would especially help the new teachers and teacher-librarians because they would have a good base to start from.
-Where were these programs when I was back in high school and university doing research for projects year after year and struggling to keep track of the websites that I visited?
-In terms of the advantages and disadvantages, with anything, there is going to be both. Right now, I am excited to focus on the advantages and use this new tool more. I’m sure that if the folksonomy-based websites are worth using, the ‘kinks’ will be worked out and in the meantime we can enjoy using websites like delicious.com.
