Social Bookmarking in Education

The Internet is constantly growing and Web 2.0 tools are offering a way to maintain these sites, through social bookmarking. This enables your bookmarks to be organized in any fashion you wish. Through the web several sites offer this service, they are digg.com, Yahoo!Buzz, StumbleUpon.com, reddit.com, Technorati.com, delicious.com, and kaboodle.com. These are just a few sites that offer this service. So what does this mean for us educators? This means is that as we are preparing our instruction we can have these sites easily accessible thus making our instruction flow smoother. This is a great tool to maintain organization of your sites. This will help educators and students quickly locate and retrieve information. Also students can become members with the instructor and the links being discussed during class maybe shared. This will lead to students expanding on the lesson as they create projects or write papers.

Some problems do exist in using social bookmarking in the classroom. These problems include over bookmarking a site or sites being down.

I noticed that I found myself over bookmarking sites and saving them as different names by mistake. This could mess up your organization; it would be nice to see the site recognize the url. and let me know that it has already been saved. The links which are stored should be updated as they are used by the instructor, if not updated the material can become stale.

Instructors will need to maintain organization of the social bookmarking network. This includes keeping links pertinent to the material and that the links are working prior to instruction for a successful delivery.

http://www.sedl.org/afterschool/resources/bookmarks.html

This site describes social bookmarking and offers links to YouTube and Wikipedia. The video demonstrates how to use www.delicious.com. Where as Wikipedia’s article details the history, advantages, and disadvantages of social bookmarking sites.

http://chronicle.com/free/2009/01/10124n.htm

This article speaks about a new social bookmarking site called Brainify. Unlike delicious, Brainify geared toward higher education. This new tool will allow for bookmarking to be tailored by students, teachers and subject matter. This site has restrictions as well, only allowing those with a college email address to join. Some disagree with this approach while others agree to it.

http://www.commun-it.org/wiki/index.php/Social_bookmarking_tools

At this site the writer explains what social bookmarking is and how it works. The writer breaks down how to do it. Also the writer gives examples of social bookmarking sites such as www.delicious.com , www.CiteuLike.com, and www.zotero.org.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/sites/sites080.shtml

In this article by “Education World” they look at Social bookmarking and the effects in education. The article does look at the current “tag” or typical bookmark system on your browser. The author , Lori Jackson then discusses the advantages to using an organized method and a method that can be shared online. Before ending the article she gives samples of social bookmarking sites and research supporting her finding on social bookmarking.

http://annamaebell.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/educational-uses-of-social-bookmarks/

In this blog written by Ann Bell explains how useful the social bookmarking sites are in education. She has found that social bookmarking is increasing collaboration and information on similar topics. Students are able to archive information and teachers are able to review the bookmarks that the students are making. One site is mentioned in this blog that allows the user to choose citation of either MLA, APA, or Chicago Style this site is www.Diigo.com.