Social Bookmarking is yet another Web 2.0 tool toward 21st Century skills. Social bookmarking does things that bookmarking in a web browser does not do. It allows for sharing and online access from any computer anywhere.
Delicious has many educational possibilities (Muir, 2005):
1. Websites for student research or projects
2. Book recommendations
3. Professional research
4. List of Books you would like to read
5. Placing web links on your school webpage
6. Students find resources at home and access them at school and vice versa
7. Share what you are reading or view what your peers are reading on the web
8. Website collections tagged by school topic
Bookmarking allows for online access to bookmarks from any computer anywhere. Bookmarks are organized using keywords or tagging. Tagging helps sort the bookmarks for easier access. “Tagging” is another name for keywords. The keywords assigned to a link are decided by the user. Some keywords are more commonly used and are sometimes suggesting by the bookmarking software. The descriptions serve as reminders or notes to self. Bookmarks can be shared with other users or groups. Bookmarks can be shared by giving users the URL directing them to your page or by RSS feed.
Examples of social bookmarking sites include Delicious.com, PortaPortal.com, onlywire.com, bonzobox.com, citeulike.com, and buddyMarks.com.
In the classroom, a teacher can have a collection of source sites as a part of a bookmarking group, thus giving the students a live link to select instead of fumbling through typing a long URL into the address bar
Social bookmarking also lets students choose from a variety of acceptable links, making for productive research that still allows for variability. (wiki.classroom20.com/socialbookmarking) Additionally, students can search for information using keywords to bring up lists of Web sites related to their topic that others have compiled. This way they can find information that they might not have thought to look at (Solomon & Shrum, 2007).
Another way that social bookmarking can be used in education is among educators. Teachers of the same grade level or even Media Specialists (Librarians) can set up an account using Delicious (for example), to share classroom resources, links to class blogs, and content area grade level activities. This school year, I plan to start such a bookmarking group starting with the media specialists at the three elementary schools that I work at. I think that it will benefit them greatly to be able to share resources and increase communication with one another.
References:
Muir, D. (2005). Simply delicious. Retrieved on October 8, 2009 from http://personal.strath.ac.uk
Social bookmarking (n.d.). Retrieved October 8, 2009 from
http://wiki.classroom20.com/Social+Bookmarking
Solomon, G., Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0 new tools, new schools. Washington,
DC: International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
Excellent, Tracey. I would love to hear how the project with the media specialists goes. It would be interesting to see the how they utilize the tool and if it is maintained over a long period of time. I hope it is well received:)
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