POPtalk

It’s time to start being social with those bookmarks, BrainPOPpers!

Delicious is a free online bookmarking tool. It’s owned by Yahoo, has been around ages and is our service of choice for collecting weblinks for our new Spotlights. This is us: http://delicious.com/brainpop_uk

We’ll be spotlighting a new topic every month. We want to gather a list of useful websites to compliment them so you and your pupils can explore around our chosen Spotlight.

Here’s an example. In March our Spotlight is on “superstructures“. We’ve got movies on such things as Seven Wonders of the World, Levers, Architecture and so on. The Spotlight is supposed to be a hub of inspiration for you and your students.

This is how it works:

1. If you are a Delicious user already then please add “brainpopukspotlights” to your Delicious network. If you are not, then sign up – it’s incredibly useful in general.
2. Make sure you have the Delicious tagging buttons installed to your browser.
3. When you find a site that you think might be useful to other BrainPOPpers on a particular Spotlight then “tag” it using one of the tags from our list of Spotlight tags and “send” it to “brainpopukspotlights”.
4. It’s important you use exactly the right keyword or it won’t aggreategate all your submissions to the same place.
5. Doing these two things will make sure it appears in our Spotlights Delicious bookmark list and appear in our Widget. You are welcome to add other tags of your choice too, which would also be helpful such as “buildings” or “Skyscrapers”.
6. Other users will then be able to access this growing list of weblinks anywhere they can get to the internet.

Why do this?

The more links everyone adds the bigger and more useful each collection gets. The BrainPOP UK team will be adding useful sites they come across too.

Do I have to be a Delicious user to take advantage of this?

You DON’T need to be a Delicious user to access all the weblinks – only to contribute new ones. It’s entirely up to you.

Do you control what gets added?

We don’t have external control over any websites except our own. You follow links external to BrainPOP UK at your own risk. We cannot stop you tagging websites but we will monitor the list every day and remove any from our account we feel are inappropriate.

How do I know if a website is relevent to a Spotlight?

Simply use your common sense. We WANT BrainPOPpers to add anything they think useful or insprational. Perhaps you use a website/tool/resource/game and want to spread the word. As long as it is related to a Spotlight it will be useful. In Delicious you can also add a description to any website you tag so use this to perhaps describe how you might use it in an educational setting.

What if I find a good site and the Spotlight has finished?

Our Spotlights will be archived. So you can add weblinks now for Spotlights not due for ages. And of course you can add weblinks well beyond when a Spotlight has finished! So add any relevent weblink at any time you like. It could be useful to someone.

The clever boys and girls at Common Craft are extremely good at explaining different web tools so let’s leave it to them to explain Delicious (via TeacherTube):

Other educators using Delicious:

http://delicious.com/Bill_Lord – emphasis on Ed tech and literacy (Bill Lord, Regional Adviser in Literacy for the National Strategies).

http://delicious.com/priestsic – general useful school weblinks gathered by Priestic School via Tom Barrett

Our delicious tags up until August:

March – Super Structures – tag: superstructures

April – Sky Spirits – tag: skyspirits

May – Reboot, Recycle, Reuse – tag: reboot

June – Growing Pains – tag: growingpains

July – BodyPOPping – tag: bodypopping

August – Starship BrainPOP – tag: starshipbrainpop