First up: del.icio.us.

Yes, it has a funny name. But bear with me … it’s awesome.

What it is: It’s called a “social bookmarking” site. When you’re surfing the internet, and want to go back to a page, you probably save it to your Favorites or Bookmarks, right? Instead you can save it to del.icio.us, which is online, not on your computer. You can then access it on any computer – I’m constantly coming across things at home for work, and vice versa.

That’s handy, but what’s even cooler is that you can share your bookmarks with others (you can also choose to keep it private). So my friends can see what I’m reading.

Why this is great for educators:

1. When you find a site that would be useful for your students you can bookmark it. You can tell them how to get to your bookmarks (to see mine, go to http://del.icio.us/1kim), or you can put a link to your bookmarks on a web page (including your online learning system or blog).

A neat way to display your bookmarks to your students or readers is to display your bookmarks or tags on the website itself, rather than just link to them (to see what I mean, check out the “What I’m reading” section in the sidebar, which is a selection of my del.icio.us bookmarks).

2. Use the bookmarks for research – my o my!

When you find a blogger in your area of interest, check out their del.icio.us bookmarks. You can also see who else has bookmarked the page, then look at their bookmarks, and so on, and so on (I’ve circled this bit in the screenshot above).

You can also search from the del.icio.us website, say on “edutech” and follow the trail from there. Instead of doing a basic google search, you’re limiting your search to sites that people already think are useful. Cool, eh?

I absolutely recommend that you check it out. I can’t believe how many useful sites I found in one day using this – it would previously have taken me days to find this much reasearch. It’s wonderful. Of course, it can get addictive, so you have to know when to cut off.

Here’s some more information that you might find useful:

• A simple explanation of del.icio.us and how you can use it in higher education at eduGuru
• Top 10 ways to use del.icio.us (the top few are a bit techie, but keep reading).
• Check out the edublogger for easy-to-follow explanations of why and how to use common online tools.
• There’s heaps of cool del.icio.us apps and ideas at Lifehacker or Quick Online Tips.