Week #6, Thing #13 - del.icio.us

I can't say enough about the power of del.icio.us. There are three reasons why I switched my school's grade-level links over to del.icio.us last fall:

1. I can share the adding of links with the teachers by giving them the username and password for their grade level. It saves me a lot of time and the teachers can get a link posted immediately.
2. I can use the "Tag" button on my Firefox toolbar to immediately add a link to the site, instead of waiting for GoLive to open up the school website and copy and paste all the information onto a webpage.
3. The social aspect of del.icio.us uses the power of all those around us, saving time and energy. I have added librarians and tech specialists in my district to my network, as well as Will Richardson from Weblogg-ed, and I can browse their links and they can browse mine. In addition, there are millions of people whose links are connected to my interests.

The links to the grade-level lists of links on del.icio.us are linked from my library page:

http://schools.shorelineschools.org/ridgecrest/library/students.php

This idea of a massive brain being fed information from millions of people is fascinating to me. I always thought I was an independent worker, better on my own than in a group, but the Internet allows for both to be strengths. I can work alone but access information from others when it is convenient for me. I am learning that I do work well collaboratively when it is in a digital format, where I have time to ponder the ideas and write and rewrite before I post or send something.

I think this mode of learning would appeal to students who may not fit into the traditional cooperative group model that all teachers use. We're supposed to work with others, but what that looks like is changing drastically. We may work well with someone we never meet face to face.

As we find more ways for students to do their work, maybe we'll find that there are more learning styles than we knew before, and now we're addressing them and allowing more students to be successful. I hope so.