I'm having trouble appreciating the appeal of any of the three tools we studying today, so I'm going to try really hard to imagine I'm living someone else's life--someone who would have a real use for these tools, because I can't imagine ever wanting to use them myself.
To bookmark items in Delicious you must either know the url, copy it from your browser's bookmarks, or go to the site and then save it to Delicious. This only seems worthwhile if you are constantly accessing numerous websites from computers that are not yours. I suppose this could come in handy for a teacher who works from several classrooms and is unable to save sites to browsers. Another feature is that the sites you have saved can be (and are expected to be) viewed by others. I suppose this may be useful if you and other teachers have saved numerous teaching resource websites and want to keep each other updated constantly on your newer discoveries without needing to discus it together.
Google Reader might seem more appealing if I wasn't already utilizing Facebook for much the same purpose (plus allowing me to keep in touch with others through updates, messages, and chatting). It is nice that they have bundles of things you might like to follow, as well as allowing you to choose items individually. When I fist followed FB and wanted to fan news sites from a wide variety of viewpoints, it took a while to choose a wide selection, so I can see the benefit of this preselection for news and other various types of things people might want to keep up to date with. Of course developments in educational research and teaching methods would be a selection any teacher would wish to follow.
I can definitely see the value of Library Thing if it was used to keep track of a shared collection of books, such as a separate library collection for teaching staff (although I would assume using the school's library system would be simpler). I don't really see the appeal for an individual to keep track of their books this way, or why s/he would feel the need to share it with the world, but to each his own. I suppose it could be useful to keep track of journal articles this way though, and I suppose a community of teachers might want to make this information more available to each other. I also do like the idea of encouraging students to discus their favorite books with each other. I'm not sure I would encourage them to make Library Thing accounts, but looking at this tool does inspire me to perhaps have a project where they exhibit their favorite books.
You are right that you are missing the point to these items entirely.
ReplyDeleteThe assumption is that you are continuing to develop professionally through reading and research to keep your teaching up to date. As we have discussed several times, keeping up to date seems not to be something to which you have been accustomed.
Delicious keeps a record of the hundreds, if not thousands of links a teacher comes across through professional listservs - well beyond the capability of a browser. And, if one is researching a new concept or wanting to track an idea, Delicious is essential.
Google Reader has nothing to do with keeping up with people's personal lives, but everything to do with their professional lives as leaders in the field record in their blogs as they push the boundaries of the teaching professional as new ideas surface and develop.
Library Thing helps monitor a teacher's classroom resources for use by the children. Most teachers have many books to use locally in their classroom that s/he finds personally important and cannot take the chance that it might not be in the classroom.
Late, and just not really guessing very well on how these are used. Only 1 point on this one for making the effort - just not understanding at all what it is about. Sorry.