Thing #13: Delicious and Social Bookmarking

When I first started exploring Delicious I wasn't all that thrilled. To me it felt no different than searching Yahoo or Google for sites. But there is an added convenience for students and teachers to have a list of librarian-approved sites when researching for specific topics or units. A librarian can create "lists" using tags. For example, if I found 10 sites each with unique information about the Civil War, the librarian can assign each one the same tag and all the students have to do is search for the librarian under "People" on delicious then click on the "Civil_War" tag. The one downside to tags is that the person adding tags has to remember that they can't use spaces; but from the student's perspective this isn't really an issue as they aren't the one's attaching tags.
One advantage to Delicious is that each teacher could make their own lists of bookmarks and share them with other teachers in and out of their departments or schools. Students always benefit when teachers share resources, and I definitely consider a teacher's list of preferred websites to be a valuable resource for research or general reference.
For junior high or high school this would be a great way to encourage the use of librarian/teacher-preferred sites for research. For elementary level, I think TrackStar would be a better bookmarking option. It's not a true social bookmarking site; it takes the social out of social bookmarking. However the interface is much easier for younger students and those who struggle with reading.