Thing No. 17

Del.icio.us:

This is a very good organizational and beneficial tool to use. Ironically, a friend of mine just asked me last night if I used this application ever. I had not heard of it until she introduced it to me. I think for many academic purposes this could replace a search engine. Using Del.icio.us you can search for any topic just like a search engine, but this site is full of people who actually use the sites, find them resourceful, and you can view their comments on the site. You never know what kind of site you may come across from a random search. You can see what other users found helpful in each bookmark and see what they tagged each as. Say you are looking for activities for 3rd graders on Native American Indians and their culture. You can search key words such as; 3rd grade, activity, Native American, Indian, or culture. The more key words that are tagged in an article, you can probably count on that resources pretty accurate to your search topic. After you find a sight that might seem relevant, you can look at the users comments and see how they used the site and what it is good for.
This site could become extremely useful in the classroom. When you are working on lesson plans and finding activities for class, you can always use other users ideas and tags to help find relevant information. After you have found information that you are looking for, you can simply press the tag or bookmark tab and add it to your bookmark. This way, you can keep this information for later use. Tagging items correctly and accurately can help you keep things organized for easy access later on. Because this is a social networking tool, sharing is easy. Teachers across the nation can get others ideas and visa versa. Teachers can also create bookmarks on helpful sites. Maybe how to write in MLA format or learning your multiplication problems. Students can access these sites through a classroom bookmark. This way, if they are at home and stuck on homework, they can use these bookmarks as references to their lessons.