Off the beaten path: del.icio.us and social tagging in the classroom

CHED 187

Laura E. Pence, LPence@hartford.edu, Department of Chemistry, University of Hartford, 200 Bloomfield Ave, West Hartford, CT 06117
Web utilities such as del.icio.us, connetea, and sitesUlike offer powerful advantages over the default bookmarking capabilities of browsers because the web utilities are computer independent and allow websites to be tagged and organized according to keywords defined by the user. Tags and tagged sites may also be shared among users in a social network thus creating an expanded database of filtered and evaluated content resources. Incorporating del.icio.us into a course provides a variety of enrichment opportunities. Students can be taught valuable skills of assessing websites for bias and reliability, and the tagged sites expand students' exposure to current issues, which enhances classroom discussion. Details of del.icio.us projects in a non-science majors class and in an advanced chemistry class will be discussed