Announcing ScuttlEDU
For the past few days I’ve been working on customizing Scuttle, a free social bookmarking system, to make it a little more friendly for educators. I had to roll up my sleeves and get in to the code and database, but as of now it functions almost perfectly.
How is it different from Scuttle?
ScuttlEDU is different in that it is designed to make tagging easier for educators. When you register for the service, you are asked to provide your grade level and subject area. When you add a bookmark, these two pieces of information become tags. You have the option of not using these tags as well.
Two modes
When you log in to the service you are in “teacher mode” by default. This means that when you add a bookmark it will automatically be tagged with your grade level and subject area. You can change the grade level and subject area if you teach more than one subject. You can also switch to “not-teacher mode” by clicking an icon in the upper-right corner. In teacher mode, the icon is a person wearing a graduation cap; in not-teacher mode, the icon is a person wearing a baseball cap. The link toggles between the two modes. In “not-teacher” mode, your bookmarks are not automatically tagged with your grade level and subject area. Use this, for example, if you are bookmarking sites not related to your teaching duties.
Here, the grade level and subject area are not automatically selected because my profile doesn’t contain values for those fields.
Here I’m adding a bookmark using the bookmarklet. The bookmarklet automatically fills in the selected text in the description field. There is a character limit. Click the pic for the full-size view.
I debated whether the world needed another bookmarking system, but I think that this one has a place. For educators who are not already heavily invested in other systems like Furl or del.icio.us, they can get started right away and use scuttlEDU for managing both personal and school-related bookmarks. It seemed like it would be easier to offer this service than to attempt to get all del.icio.us users who are also teachers to start tagging their bookmarks with grade level and subject area.
In addition, individual schools or school districts can install a local version of ScuttlEDU. This can help the smaller user base share resources that might more specifically target its curriculum.
Despite James’ suggestion, I never really viewed this as a sort of philanthropic bookmarking or bookmarking as an organizational tool. As I wrote earlier, I think these online bookmarking systems offer a clear advantage over browser-based bookmarks, which should be incentive enough to get educators to use them. The initial motivation, then, is selfish. After adding bookmarks and, later, exploring other users’ bookmarks, the benefit of such a system should hit the reluctant educator like a ton of bricks.
ScuttleEDU is currently being tested. If you’d like to give it a whirl, just drop me a line.
August 2nd, 2005 - 8:06 am
Hey Todd…I’d love to give this a test drive. How can I participate?
Will Richardson
August 2nd, 2005 - 11:31 am
Add me to your list of testers as well. I have a number of ideas and places where this would be very interesting.
August 2nd, 2005 - 12:36 pm
[…] http://ceitl.zanestate.edu/blog/archives/2005/08/announcing-scuttledu/ ScuttlEDU is different in that it is designed to make tagging easier for educators. When you register for the service, you are asked to provide your grade level and subject area. When you add a bookmark, these two pieces of information become tags. You have the option of not using these tags as well. […]
August 2nd, 2005 - 12:54 pm
Todd,
I would be glad to test the site for you. I wrote a guide to Furl (it is on my blog) for educators and use that site extensively. I like the idea of school/education tags. Also, since other sites can have adult sites listed it would be great to have a k-12 site.
August 2nd, 2005 - 1:36 pm
Scattered, covered,
I’m feeling a little “scattered, covered
August 2nd, 2005 - 8:17 pm
[…] As if life wasn’t confusing enough, Scuttle is coming online now, too. I want to be able to make a recommendation, but which one? I’m planning for a workshop and now my husband (a tough customer) is asking which one he should use. I WISH I KNEW!! […]
August 4th, 2005 - 8:16 pm
Please let me know how I can participate. I would love to give this a try.
August 6th, 2005 - 3:56 am
I am very interested in testing scuttle. Thanks
August 6th, 2005 - 2:17 pm
[…] http://ceitl.zanestate.edu/blog/archives/2005/08/announcing-scuttledu/, er et social bookmarking system for undervisere. […]
August 8th, 2005 - 9:44 pm
We have been using del.icio.us to give links to students as well as to populate subject-specific “links” pages on Intranet websites via del.icio.us rss feeds.
I think a educational social bookmarking site is definitely needed. Imagine the power of hundreds, thousands of educators collecting web resources and sharing. Talk about a learning community, I love it!
The existing social bookmarking options are very much “techie” centric (obviously) and have are very successful for that specific community. Time to take it to the educators.
I am happy to test out, let me know…
August 9th, 2005 - 7:52 am
That’s great that you’re using del.icio.us to share links. Do teachers at your school collaborate and decide on how to tag their marks? Have they tried to extend the practice beyond the walls of your institution?
August 10th, 2005 - 2:02 pm
I would like to try this. Please let me know how. Thanks.
August 17th, 2005 - 9:51 pm
I’m very interested in taking this for a test drive. Thanks.
September 21st, 2005 - 2:00 am
[…] […]
September 21st, 2005 - 2:18 am
[…] Yesterday I posted about using facets or automated tags within del.icio.us to augment the browsing experience…well I just discovered that Todd over at Big IDEA has implemented automated tags in scuttledu…see the added browsing feature. […]
December 19th, 2005 - 1:29 pm
I am looking for someone who would be gracious enough to help me
install scuttle on a small website that I am working on.
December 23rd, 2005 - 3:38 am
search for howto or scuttle gives no hits for installing scuttle.
You didn’t document anything ? hint hint
January 4th, 2006 - 1:29 pm
@ Cynic: Scuttle can be found at http://scuttle.org/wiki ; if you want my hacks let me know.
January 10th, 2006 - 4:23 pm
[…] Scuttledu is one of those efforts, essentially a del.icio.us service for classroom use, particularly K-12. It’s hard to say how successful this effort will be as a content aggregator, but maybe it will find a good niche catering to the specific needs of users like Doug as the revolutionize the K-12 classroom. […]
February 10th, 2006 - 9:17 pm
I’d like to set ScuttleEdu up for our teachers. I think it would go over huge. Please let me know where I can get it!
December 12th, 2006 - 10:31 pm
Is this still available, and if so could I test it out for use in my elementary school? I am a fourth grade teacher. Please e-mail me. Thank you for your work on this.
December 21st, 2006 - 3:29 pm
Is there a reason you do not have this available for download on your blog? I have posted but have not gotten a response. Does anyone have this script to share?
February 20th, 2007 - 9:01 am
i like this solution for share the bookmarks.
May 28th, 2007 - 5:33 am
Does world need another bookmarking website? I tried to launch different modifications of scuttle as niche focusing bookmarking websites. Hopeless, only spammers love them.
September 12th, 2007 - 3:34 pm
I agree with Venture.
Scuttle is great but very easy script.
I use this script on one of my site and spammers very hard try everyday spam bookmarkf
February 12th, 2008 - 9:34 am
hello
SemanticScuttle is a social bookmarking tool (based on Scuttle) experimenting new features as hierarchical tags, collaborative descriptions or OpenID authentification. More details on the wiki.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/semanticscuttle/
April 13th, 2008 - 9:35 am
Cool we are using Scuttle love to check it out