Thing #17: Tagged as Delicious

I have to admit, I'm a little late to the Delicious party.  To be honest, I hadn't seen the usefulness behind the idea of social bookmarking.  I consider myself pretty security-conscious, and the idea of having my bookmarks be public where literally anyone could examine them seemed like just another way for someone to learn about me and my Internet surfing habits.  I'm already a bit disturbed about how much tracking of our Internet habits already takes place; avoiding another opportunity to be "tracked" seemed a wise precaution.

Using Delicious was an interesting experience;  I can now see the value in a social method for bookmarking:  It provides a lot of the same benefit of having "access anywhere" like other "cloud" services, and adds the social dimension by allowing you to follow and share your "stacks" of links.  However, there are some competing services now that provide these some of the same benefits.  For example, I can access my saved bookmarks on any machine with Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox by "signing in" to the browser.  Delicious does have the advantage, though, in that it is browser-agnostic (and is integrated into the new Yahoo! Axis browser).  One of the newest social sites to challenge Delicious is Pinterest, which has exploded in popularity.  While I haven't used Pinterest myself, friends who have claim it also allows you to socially share links that interest you by "pinning" it to a virtual corkboard.

From an education standpoint, I can see quite a bit of potential for using Delicious in the classroom.  Imagine having a stack of links that students can access for a project or as part of a webquest, or having students search for a particular tag, like "geometry" or "algebra" and do research from there.  Having links that students or fellow teachers can access from anywhere is definitely an advantage.  Like it explained in the Common Craft video, having teachers sharing bookmarks through delicious would be a simple but effective way for them to collaborate on resources and techniques.

Thing #16: Organization & Productivity on the Web!?!

It's more likely than you think.

Contrary to popular belief, the Internet is not just a place to look at funny cat photos, or rot your brain on YouTube, or pirate torrent legitimately purchase and download music, movies & games.  There are a number of services and apps that are actually designed to help you keep organized and be more productive, and the majority of them are free, to boot!  Check out some of these productivity-boosting technologies after the jump.

Thing #15: And Make It Wiki!

Wikis have become an integral part of the Internet.  In fact, it's almost a given that if something exists, there's a wiki for it somewhere on the Internet.  I was first introduced to wikis through Wikipedia (or as I only-somewhat-jokingly call it, the One Wiki to Rule Them All), which quickly became a staple in high school and college as a "jumping off" point for doing further research into a topic.  I soon found other uses for wikis, though, as sites like Wikia started developing fan community wikis for video games, PC modding projects, and more.  I am very familiar with reading, using, and even contributing to wikis, but I had never considered using them for education until I started working on this "thing" for the blog.

When looking through the suggested wikis, I really liked Welker's Wikinomics - it has everything you'd need to teach economics at the high school level.  It even includes special sub-units for AP or IB Economics courses, which means that you have a flexible curriculum, already in place!  It would make a great supplement for any high school (and even freshman collegiate) economics classes.

I will post the link to my created wiki at a later date.