Thing #17

I took a look around Del.icio.us, and I regret to admit that I do not see a lot of utility for this tool. It is a neat way to share bookmarks and be able to access them from anywhere, but beyond that I fail to see its usefulness. I suppose that a teacher could keep a running list of useful sites for their students to access, but it seems to me that this could be done much more effectively in a blog format. I looked around at the "comments" that others have made on the bookmarks, and some are enlightening and helpful; others are not.

The one good thing I can say about Del.icio.us is that it is pretty well organized, and could be a powerful search engine. You can click on different "tags" and see other sites with similar tags. The risk, however, is that you can quickly and easily veer waaaay off track. When I ventured outside the APSU23 things portion of the site, I wound up looking at a video of the Muppets singing a Queen song. Although this was entertaining, it was hardly relevant to education.

I suppose that teachers can create a Del.icio.us account and create a set of bookmarks that would be useful and relevant to his/her class. Del.icio.us lets students comment on the links, and add others that they think might be useful. Del.icio.us is a fascinating tool, but for teachers I think it is less than ideal. As a future teacher, I think that I will prefer to use tools that I have more control over. For now, I think that I can do everything I can do in Del.icio.us in a blog, and in a blog I will have more control over content.

What about you? Are you going to use Del.icio.us? Or do you think that it is a neat tool, but one with limited utility in the classroom?