Our favourite social bookmarking site, Delicious, has a brand new look.  There’s a few new features, and it all looks a bit more modern.  A bit of exploring will see you discover what’s new in the product lineup.

While you’re there, make sure that you check our staff delicious page.  Judy’s forever stocking it up with fantastic new links.

We’ve been using delicious at St. Michael’s for some time now, putting together quite a collection of web resources (mostly from Judy’s hard work and initiative).  Now using delicious is even easier.

Users of other web browsers such as Firefox have had this for a while now; now Internet Explorer users (such as most of the staff and students at St. Michael’s… at least at school) can download and install a delicious sidebar.

The good news and a download link can be found at the delicious blog.

Basically, you can browse your tags and bookmarks, and easily post new bookmarks within the browser; that is, without going to the delicious website.  It makes things much easier to post as you go, and makes delicious a tool you use far more frequently from my experience.  So give it a go.

Monday afternoon will see our second del.icio.us workshops held in 4/5K. Please bring your laptop with you, because you’ll be setting up an account with the social bookmarking site.

Cherie and Rebecca have kindly offered to help you through the sign up in my absence. It’s so easy, however (it’s all done in three steps), that you could do it yourself!

In fact, if you can’t make it tomorrow afternoon and want to do it yourself, let me direct you to a few resources that will show you what to do.

Tech-Ease, from the University of South Florida, have a series of simple videos that show you everything from registering to using subscriptions.

• You can also subscribe to the movies as podcasts through the iTunes store.

The Tech-Ease video is done using the Apple Mac browser, Safari. The installation of the buttons is a little different in Internet Explorer, but still easy to do. Here’s how it’s done on the del.icio.us site. Don’t worry too much, though; installing the buttons is part of the sign-up process.

Photo: Thumbnails in del.icio.us

Yesterday saw the first Multimedia Monday workshop for this term; the first in a four-part series on Social bookmarking the del.icio.us way.

At yesterday’s session, we explored why you would want to go to the trouble of setting up your bookmarks in a del.icio.us account rather than use the existing “Favourites” or “Bookmarks” on your web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari).

In fact, if you’re someone who uses more than one web browser program, or more than one computer (i.e. every teacher in the school), or likes to share their new “fave” websites with others, then del.icio.us is actually less trouble (not more) than maintaining your existing bookmarks. It’s proven to be an excellent tool for collecting grade resources this year.

So, why use del.icio.us? Well, if you missed the session yesterday, then here is a short video to give you the info.

Also, here are the slides from a presentation made by Judy O’Connell at the 2007 Catholic Education Commission Learning With Web 2.0 Forum.

[slideshare id=72623&doc=social-bookmarkingdelicious-expos4375&w=425]

Don’t forget that the next session, which will help you to get signed up with del.icio.us, is being brought forward to next Monday (29 October). Bring your laptop with you to 4/5K.

Teachers, have you looked at our school’s del.icio.us pages this year yet?

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