Vi.sualize.us is a very useful “social bookmarking” site like del.icio.us.   The big difference is that it’s for images, and shows small, thumbnail sketches of the ones you bookmark on your home vi.sualize.us page.

I’ve used what are called “picture data sets” in my classes before, and this makes it easily possible to do the same online.  I’ll give students a list of categories related to the unit we’re studying, and then they’ll have to search the web for images that they believe fit into each one.

On Vi.sualize.us they’ll be able to “tag” it and write a fairly lengthy description.  They’ll be able to sort their pages by these “tags” (category names).

Like in del.iciou.us, you can install a button on your browser toolbar, but you don’t have to in order to use the site.  Students can instead easily copy and paste the urls of the images.

As I’ve said before, these useful Web 2.0 applications are coming at a fast and furious pace.  Not only is it practically impossible to keep up with posting about them,  there’s certainly no time to use them all in the classroom.

I’ve placed this link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Picture Data Sets.