BP4_2009102_Social-Bookmarking

"Researchers at all levels (students, faculty, staff) can quickly set up a social bookmarking page for their personal and/or professional inquiries" (Cannata, 2009). Social bookmarking provides users with the tools to tag their bookmarks, making it easier to organize, store, and retrieve the information that they find online. This has great implications for both teachers and students.


O'Neal (2007) suggested several ways in which educators can use social bookmarking. One of the advantages to using social bookmarking over a web browser's bookmarking capabilities is that it allows the user to access his or her bookmarks from any computer with Internet access. This is a huge argument for setting students up on Delicious or another similar social bookmarking site. If they find a good resource at school, it does them little good to bookmark it on that computer--the next time they need it, they will likely be at a different computer or at home. Social bookmarking gives them an easy way to access these sites that they find at school from home and vice versa. (This is of course, an advantage for teachers and the resources they find, too.)


Furthermore, social bookmarking allows users to share their bookmarks. Teachers in similar content areas or grade levels can see what other teachers have bookmarked. This can save valuable time in performing Internet searches (O'Neal, 2007). As O'Neal stated, "I want to connect to you and share my bookmarks with others around the world. I want to learn from you based on your bookmarks. I also want to save time, because maybe you have already filtered through the ten million Google sites that reference volcanoes and have found a handful that are perfect for the classroom" (para. 7).


Churchill (n.d.) compared Google and Delicious as search engines. One of the advantages to Delicious is that it shows how many people have bookmarked a given site, helping students or teachers see how useful it it. Furthermore, it shows other tags that a website has been given which helps users determine relevance. Finally, it shows who has bookmarked a site, and students or teachers can see what other sites that person has bookmarked. The whole process of social bookmarking allows Internet searching to become more efficient and collaborative.


"Social bookmarking simplifies the distribution of reference lists, bibliographies, papers, and other resources among peers or students" (Educause, 2005). This has implications for student research projects, and seems it would be especially valuable if students are collaborating on research. Furthermore, tagging a link can be more useful than saving it in a web browser's "favorites" folder. It allows for the link to be easily accessed if it applies to more than one topic or project, in a much more efficient way than saving it to multiple folders (Educause, 2005).


Thompson (2008) suggested using social bookmarking to pre-select sites for student projects. Another advantage of social bookmarking is that users can decide who can see their links. A teacher could set it up so only students with a password can see them. Or so that different classes can access different links.


Now that I know about it, I would argue that every educator (maybe every person?) should utilize social bookmarking. The ability to access one's bookmarks from any computer is huge! Is there anyone who uses computers and always uses the same one? I doubt it. I can see huge advantages to searching through sites like Delicious as well--it allows users to find sites that have been "pre-screened," so to speak.


I also think that if teachers want their students to do Internet based research, they should teach students how to utilize social bookmarking. It gives students efficient access to their resources, and perhaps more importantly, allows them to collaborate and share with each other (and others from all over the Internet).

References

Cannata, C. (2009). Folksonomy, tagging and taxonomy for effective learning:


perspectives of learning 2.0 in the XXI century. International Journal of


Emerging Technologies in Learning, 4(2), 26-32. Retrieved from


Education Research Complete.

Churchill, D. (n.d.) Social bookmarking: its applications in education. Retrieved


October 4, 2009, from http://www.slideshare.net/zvezdan/social-


bookmarking-in-education

Educause Learning Initiative. (2005, May). 7 things you need to know about


social bookmarking. Retrieved October 4, 2009, from


http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli7001.pdf

O’Neal, C. (2007, April 1). So delicious: a must-use bookmarking tool. Edutopia


Retrieved October 4, 2009 from http://www.edutopia.org/so-del-icio-us

Thompson, J. (2008). Don't be afraid to explore Web 2.0. Phi Delta Kappan,


89(10), 711-778. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier.