Social Bookmarking, never heard of it before which is very sad, considering I wanted to integrate technology into my classroom-immediately. Not utilizing social bookmarking while trying to add technology today is like having a bookstore without a catalog of your store. You know there are books there for different needs but finding the information you needed in a timely fashion is almost impossible.
Bookmarking allows information that has been researched to be readily available. Using web 2.0 tools to incorporate specific topic searches or referenced material is brilliant. If your class is completing a project on a specific topic, the teacher may have a compiled list of sights that the students need to visit or the students themselves compile of list of sites giving addition information on their subject. “So not only are they collecting sites for themselves, they are collaboratively building a classroom resource” (Richardson, 2007).
Social bookmarking can go beyond the uses of the classroom and can be used by department (social studies / science / honors math), school (university / high school / elementary etc.), club (senior class / student government / the debate team), or even per school district.
In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.” (Newschoolnetworkmarketing, 2009).
I now plan on using social bookmarking with all of my classes. I know now that I will be able to connect subjects and topics by tagging the links too identify what is being learned. I can use social bookmarking as a tool for my students to gain additional information outside of the classroom, which will make them more connected to the learning process.
It is not all as perfect as it sounds. The only drawback I can tell would be trying to get all of your students on the same page with tagging information. “There are no specifications made for creating tags. The user can create them however he/she wants. Which poses a problem for someone searching for that topic, but who doesn't have the correct tag, or may be spelling the tag incorrectly” (Molson, 2009). Perhaps a brief overview of what is expected when using social bookmarking is best. The guidelines for tagging information can be included in this overview and that should be the start of a beautiful relationship with social bookmarking in your lessons.
Delicious.com (2009). Del.icio.us. Retrieved on November 1, 2009 from
http://delicious.com/
Diigo.com. (2009). Diigo. Retrieved on November 8, 2009 from http://www.diigo.com/
Library.thinkquest.org. (n/d). Endangered Bees Gallery. Retrieved on October 30, 2009
from http://library.thinkquest.org/07aug/02034/gallery.html
Molson. (2009). Social bookmarking and beyond. Retrieved November 6, 2009 from
http://molson.glogster.com/Social-Bookmarking/
Newschoolmarketing.com. (2009). Blogging and social bookmarking. Retrieved on
November 7, 2009 from http://newschoolnetworkmarketingblog.com/blogging/blogging-and-social-bookmarking/
Richardson, William. (2007). Taming the beast: Social bookmarking. Retrieved on
November 4, 2009 from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/
CA6420397.html
No comments:
Post a Comment