Delicious Blog # 5 EllisonT

            Trying to find resources for my social bookmarking site—Delicious was very interesting. I used most of the websites from my annotated bibliography, but I had a problem at first trying to get my description placed on Delicious. I found that I could only use 1000 characters in the description part on Delicious. I tried several times to copy and paste my description from the annotated bibliography, but it would not take. I finally pressed the enter key after I copy and pasted it and it took, but it would only hold 1000 characters, so I had to take out part of my explanation.

In two other classes from previous semesters I had found several great websites but I did not use them because I need not add tags on them. However, I am going to share with the class my old websites from Delicious. There are so many great websites for teachers, students and educators which are for special education, Web 2.0, 21^st Century technology, Autism and many more. This is the link for my Delicious links for the other classes: http://www.delicious.com/terrycellison. I have found them very helpful, please add them to your Delicious list. 

One of the websites which I used for research was Charlielove.org, A Social Network for Education: http://charlielove.org/?p=123. This website has great resources, lesson plans, curriculum design, innovation and games. Teachers can blog other teachers and Charlie to find games which will engage students and also help to teach different strategies. It will help teachers to prepare great lesson plans to keep students engaged. It helps teachers to be up to date with innovative designs and technology for education. Another great website is Sir Ken Robinson’s website http://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson.html because he is a great educational speaker. Sir Robinson is very specific about how 21^st Century Technology will enhance student learning and help students to retain life-long learning skills. One other great website http://www.coolmath-games.com/  that I use for my students who have exceeded my expectations during the week is to reward them by playing math games on Cool-Math. This website is great for all students, even my special needs students. It develops student’s strategies and helps them to comprehend spelling and math activities.  It also has geography and reading activities.

As I continued to work on my bookmarking site, I found it was a great way to organize my websites into different categories so it would make it easier to locate later on. For example, a category for education, 21^st Century Tools, teachers, students, special education, science, math, language arts just to name a few. I did try out Diigo, but I could not determine how to use it, so Delicious was the social bookmarking site was for me. I have really enjoyed researching the different websites for special education, Autism, technology and 21^st Century Tools and have learned a lot about this great topic. The Delicious website will be a valuable resource in the future because of the many different website resources that I was able to add to it.

My first reaction to using digital technology such as Delicious, Twitter and Facebook was that I really did not want to use them. However after I have used the social networks and bookmarks, it has made life easier for me. You can share your resources with your classmates and they can share with you. This creates an unlimited websites for teachers and educators and administrators to use. One great advantage in using Delicious or Diigo is it allows you to add tags and a description of each resource you add. It is very easy to share with others. I have really enjoyed learning about Delicious, Twitter and Facebook, because my students knew more about these sites than I did. I wanted to improve my technology skills and be able to communicate with my students as they were discussing Twitter and Facebook. They really had some great ideas about using these social networks for a class project. Learning is an ever day affair. It is never too late to learn something new. Here is my link for my Delicious websites:

http://www.delicious.com/stacks/view/DlhrgO