Del.icio.us
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Type of application / System Requirements
Del.icio.us is a server application that needs no installation in principle. All you need is a web browser and an Internet connection. Del.icio.us can install a plugin for your browser to have two extra buttons on your toolbar of your browser. These buttons are very convenient although not absolutely neccessary to get started with Del.icio.us. Supported web browsers for this plugin include Mozilla, Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer. You could also install the Yahoo toolbar which includes the same functionality (buttons).
Purpose
The idea of Del.icio.us is to have an all-time-available storage place for your web resources. That is to say, links to interesting web pages can be stored and categorised to retrieve them easily. Instead of having a linear list of favourites as you would have in your browser, the links are organised automatically by giving them a commentary and a list of arbitrary one word tags. Del provides a searching mechanism to browse your tags and search for specific terms.
It is also possible to share your urls with other Del.icio.us users. Actually, this is the default, but you can store your links privately as well. Since people store links to web pages they found worth visiting again, Del.icio.us provides a rich resource of links that can be browsed.
Also, once you have found a person with interesting links, you can add the person to your network to be able to find these web addresses quickly.
What it does
While you are browsing you can tell Del.icio.us to store for you a web addresses by clicking the corresponding button in the toolbar. It will be saved under your account. Del.icio.us keeps for you the number of people that saved the url and the time you saved it. Furthermore by attaching arbitrary terms you may choose yourself to describe the content or the purpose of the resource, you will be able to categorise and thus organise the links you wanted Del.icio.us to remember. These tags as they are called provide a way to both browse and search for interesting material.
How can it be used for creation of OERs
When creating an OER, you need to consult books, magazines and the Internet for relevant information (or tools perhaps). When an online resource has been found that you want partly included in your course or educational material bundle, Del.icio.us could benefit in two ways.
- While in the exploration phase of setting up your material or when you come across something interesting for an existing course, you can store the actual link with a tag that is meaningfull for this course. This way you could retrieve all the resources for the course by referring to this tag.
- You could create an account specially for the course and link from your course directly into this Del.icio.us account, letting the students explore the resources themselves directly.
How can it be used for consumption of OERs
As stated before, students could be referred to a Del.icio.us account to follow the links listed there and use these websites themselves. Of course students could also be encouraged to organise and maintain a list of sources they used for a paper they have to hand in. Often it occurs that students copy texts from the Internet without accrediting the author and mentioning the source. This might not be deliberate plagiasm, but just sloppy behaviour. To help them keeping track of the sources they use and to organise them, they might benefit the functionality offered by Del.icio.us.
How can it be used for reuse of OERs
Since Del.icio.us provides the user with the possibility to create a network of users who share the same interests and to subscribe to a certain topic (tag), users can learn about new content (in the form of lists of resources) added to the Del.icio.us site in a dynamic way. Since users link to eachother, and eachothers educational resources, the use of Del.icio.us obviously promotes the reuse of educational material (provided of course that people publish their material online).
License support
Currently the Del.icio.us site supports Creative Commons licensing on RSS-feeds. So if people create a list of resources out of your favourites by means of clicking the RSS-feed link, the source will contain a note on the Creative Commons licensing. This license can be set in the settings of the user. Other options are the public domain license or stick to the Copyright, which is te default.
Standards / Compatibility
The external links that you find on the site are just standard html. The links to tags are composed of "http://del.icio.us/" + (username or category) + tag. So for example: http://del.icio.us/username/piano or http://del.icio.us/popular/piano for links tagged piano of the user 'username' or rather popular respectively.
How to use it
If you go to the site http://del.icio.us you can start browsing the content right away. To post links to resources yourself, you should be a registered member which is for free. You could choose not to install the plugin to enhance your browser with two buttons to tag a certain page and have a Del.icio.us menu, but quite handy.
How to get around
The page is roughly built up of 6 parts. A navigation part (top left), a personal section -to change settings etc. (top right), next a search bar, next a list of current items to the left and a tag menu to the right. At the bottom there is a footer for rss and some general information.
How to find stuff
There is a number of ways to find interesting material on Del.icio.us.
- Search the Del.icio.us website (or the whole Internet -you are redirected to Yahoo) with the search facility at the top of the page.
- Find other persons with the same interest from other interesting resources
- Type http://del.icio.us/tag/guitar+electric to find links that are tagged with both "guitar" and "electric".
- Within all your favourite resources you can quickly search by typing a tag in the box after your username at the top of the page
- Click on a tag you find somewhere on the page. On the right a cloud (or plain list) of tags is shown with the current tag marked
How to build up a collection of resources
- Every time you come across an interesting site, one could tag the site with the tag-button. The site is automatically added to your favourites with the respective description and tags.
- Alternatively, one could click on post in the Del.icio.us site (once logged in) and do the same
- Tags can be bundled to keep an oversight of the subjects covered. Tags can be removed, renamed also.
- one can import the favourites of your browser into Del.icio.us. These will be private automatically, but you can choose to make them public.
Sandbox
The site of Del.icio.us is simply http://del.icio.us/
Comments / Discussion
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