Week 6: Thing THIRTEEN

As far as bookmarks go, I am manically organized. Each bookmark is meticulously labeled and placed into an appropriate folder, wherein they are listed based on usage frequency. While del.icio.us offers this same sort of organization, the real draw for me was the fact that the site allows you to access your bookmarks from any internet-capable device. Since my daughter was born two summers ago, I have made a very pointed effort to practice a "separation of work and state". As such, in spite of the fact that I have a laptop computer, I keep it at school so I can limit the temptation/possibility of doing schoolwork while I am at home with the family.

Exploring the SJLibraryLearning2 led me to a pretty neat site called krunchd, which, similar to del.icio.us, allows you to share a list of your favorite webpages by consolidating them into a single URL. The only difference that I can see on the outset is that unlike del.icio.us, you do not need to sign up for a krunchd account in order to share your links.

One of the most interesting sites I came across using the "Popular Tags" feature on del.icio.us was called Academic Earth, under the "education" tag. This site features video lectures by top scholars from across the globe. Lectures are categorized by subject, university, and instructor, which makes it very easy to find a lecture on any sort of topic. The instructors and universities are somewhat limited (but by no means of poor quality) to Berkeley, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and Princeton, and there are 17 subjects from which to choose, ranging from astronomy to religion. I watched the first half of a 50-minute entry-level chemistry lecture from Professor Kristie Boering at Cal Berkeley and am considering showing portions to my chemistry classes -- in part because the material covered in the lecture is pertinent to our current unit, but I also hope to give them both an appreciation and a basis for comparison for my class versus a college-level course.