OLJ task - Delicious

I have engaged with Delicious for the first time as a result of INF506.  As brand new to social bookmarking, Delicious was not user friendly, a sentiment echoed by others (Tyler, 2010).  It threw up a lot of barriers that were not easily solved and needed a lot of initial time investment to get decent benefits. Although the organisation and tagging of links was very helpful, this was overwhelmed by the amount of unrewarded effort required to access the features. The email verification system was problematic. Once that was fixed by Delicious, I found a problem with following or checking my followers. I am sure that more time interacting with Delicious would result in a much higher benefit to effort ratio. However reluctance quickly developed around clicking anywhere new or exploring beyond the known.

Once past the initiation period, there are advantages for schools. It has the potential to be used as a topic pathfinder or comprehensive resource list for students where they are given access to safe and appropriate sites for research on topics. This would both increase student online safety while supporting the current curriculum requirements to conduct inquiry-based lessons using digital technology (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA] 2010: ACARA, 2012).  Having access to an organised online set of bookmarks is a boon as students will rarely be on the same computer.  This opens up the possibility of students accessing resources from home and for homework. Delicious could be as an alternative reading list and reduce concerns around school bag weight.  School libraries could create resource lists for staff or students, or classify resources according to type (audio, video, graphic) by adding tags (Dixon, n.d.) or even crowd sourcing (Tay, 2009) to increase the participatory nature of the library (Schrier, 2011).

Teachers can harness the collective wisdom of other educators as they have access to comments, tip and traps regarding Web 2.0 tools and other resources before visiting any of the sites. Being able to narrow a tag search by using the tag filter usefully targets and refines searching. Multiple tagging is very useful as resources often fit into more than one category. The fact Delicious suggests tags means you are given the option to immediately be in line with what is already available. However it is essential to remember that as there are no standard for tag structures, and this leaves the door open to miss-tagging in areas such as capitalisation, spelling, and just plain misinterpretation of websites.

 

References

Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (2010) General Capabilities: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Capability. In The Australian Curriculum. Retrieved 12^th January 2013 from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/GeneralCapabilities/Information-and-Communication-Technology-capability/Introduction/Introduction

Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (2012) Draft shape of the Australian Curriculum: Technologies. Retrieved 12^th January 2013 from http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Draft_Shape_of_the_Australian_Curriculum_Technologies_paper_-_March_2012.pdf

Dixon, A. (n.d.) Social Bookmarking. In SVEA Project. Retrieved 30^th January from http://www.svea-project.eu/fileadmin/_svea/downloads/Social_Bookmarking_02.pdf

Schrier, R. A. (2011). Digital librarianship & social media: the digital library as conversation facilitator, D-Lib Magazine, 17(7/8) July/August 2011. Retrieved 27^th January from http://dlib.org/dlib/july11/schrier/07schrier.html

Tay, A. (2009). Libraries and crowdsourcing – 6 examples. In Library 2.0.  Retrieved 31^st January from http://www.library20.com/profiles/blogs/libraries-and-crowdsourcing-6

Tyler, J. (2010). 2.0 – Advantages and Disadvantages of the “delicious” method.  In What the cool people know.  Retrieved 20^th January 2013 from http://whatthecoolpeopleknow.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/20-advantages-and-disadvantages-of.htmlI)