Book Marks' Dinner Party

I’ve used delicious for a few years; I first heard about from my friend Heidi who was working on her doctoral research when she was staying at my house. I was in the midst of beginning my To Kill a Mockingbird unit which involved a lot of searching online for information to work into my classes. “Why don’t you just use delicious?” Heidi asked as she watched me struggle to manage all of my favorites into some kind of order. The rest is history.

What I didn’t think about then, that I do now, is that social bookmarking is a collaborative tool. Often we assume that we know how to manage information, but honestly, it something that the Library of Congress fights over. Delicious does offer suggestions at what to tag a specific site, but I am well aware that I can ignore their suggestion. I enjoy seeing how many people have tagged a site before adding it to my own collection.

In my Applied Communications course, when we do research essays, I encourage students to find Internet information from the social bookmarking page. The ability to draw from others’ experiences with a specific topic can be invaluable. This assignment would meet NETS-3—collecting and organizing information.