del.icio.us stumbleupon

Now that the students have all sloped off and the BTEC marking has (almost) ceased it’s a bit of a mixed blessing. I’m getting really excited about trying out some of these new things that I’m learning about. There’s lots I think the students will really get a lot from. I’ve had a chance to try some stuff (comiqs, fronter and simple film making) but there’s not really been formal lessons for quite a few weeks now so I’m limited in terms of outcomes.

However, I have a bit more freedom to play with things now and social bookmarking is one of the things I’ve wanted to get my head around for a while now. So I had a look at del.icio.us. Then I forgot about del.icio.us. Then I was reminded again about del.icio.us so I’ve been having a go. It’s useful, if a little baffling at first. I’m sure I haven’t fully gotten to grips with all of the applications, but in terms of ordering links I like it a lot better than the usual internet browser bookmarks option. If I want to a resource on physics and stars my tags give me this.

Then there’s stumbleupon, we put it on the toolbar last night. I’ve been flicking through it today, tagging everything very quickly through del.icio.us generally using the toread tag so I don’t have to look at it all right now. If I think it’s interesting, it gets a toread tag and when I have more time I’ll check out my toread’s and tag things more appropriately. Stumbleupon is great, there’s all sorts of fun stuff I’ve found today. In loading the toolbar you get to choose a list of general areas you might be interested in. Hit the stumbleupon button and you’ll be transported to a site that someone else has stumbled upon and rated. Tag it in del.icio.us and you’ve very quickly built up a well organised, easy to search through set of web resources.