Thing #17

I enjoyed learning about these social bookmarking sites.  I went on to the APSU del.icio.us account, Digg, and Stumbleupon.  Of the three, I found Stumbleupon to be the one I liked the least.  It would not let you explore much of the site without creating an account.  I want to be able to see what it can do before I create an account.  Digg and del.icio.us allow you to view just about everything on their site as a visitor.  I really like the categories on Digg and how it pops up the most digged stories.  Del.icio.us also had many useful features.  Del.icio.us's tagging process is great that allows you total freedom to organize your material.

These sites are great to use in the classroom.  On del.icio.us I can create tags for any topic I choose.  So, I could create a tag called World War I research.  From there I can research sites, scan them, and then tag those I find useful.  I then share these with my class so they now have a list of approved sites to explore.  I can do this for any topic, project, or assignment in class.  This provides me an excellent tool to support a student's research. 

Teachers can use this is much the same way.  We can add this to our collaboration kit bag.  We can share sites, stories, and publications on an unlimited amount of education material.  It is just another way to get the best information out to colleagues. 

I think this is a function we will see a great deal in school in the coming years.  Great tool.