Exploring Social Bookmarking

Exploring Social Bookmarking

Another Web 2.0 Tool

My Reflections on the Process of Learning about Social Bookmarking 

Before starting this assignment I had no idea that Social Bookmarking existed.  For the most part I have been happy to use the Favorites tool on web browser.  I have had others tell me about a great site and if I liked it enough I have bookmarked it on my computer.  I’ve even watched students while researching, jump up from their computer and rush over to a neighbor who had discovered a great site.  They then write down the URL and, more often than not, type it in wrong and have to try again.  So in all this time the thought that this whole process was cumbersome and that there must be a better way didn’t even cross my mind.  I really am a Web 1.5 (not quite Commodore 64) person.  So my learning has had to start at zero.  I began by reading opinions and reviews of the various online social bookmarking tools and settled on using Delicious because that seemed to be the most popular if not the most powerful.  To start with I felt like I needed a basic level without all the features.  Signing up for an account was very straight forward as was importing my computer based bookmarks.  After importing them I decided to take the time to go back and tag them as it seems that much of the benefit of the tool is in the various tags one applies to it.  As a beginner I almost felt that this tagging process was too easy.  With no clear guidelines it seems that some of the benefit of tagging might be lost.  As I have read more I realize that this is the case.  However, with more experience, I am sure one would be able to refine the tagging protocol (particularly among a group) to gain benefit from it.  After the tagging process I then spent time searching sites using tags and the search tool.  I also tried to set up Delicious on my work computer.  Although I was blocked from installing the Delicious buttons on my Explorer Brower I was still able to use my Delicious account through the web.  I even managed to export my browser favorites and then import them into Delicious. 

Social Bookmarking As a Tool for my Own Personal Learning

As I’ve been learning how social bookmarking works I have decided that I would like to tag everything in my life.  All those things that I spend so much time looking for and organizing could just be tagged and all would pop up with one click.  Think of the benefits!  We spend your lives tagging things and sharing things so that when we get old we can find thing easily or borrow from others.  Until I can figure out how to organize and store stuff and not just information I will just have to try to organize my on-line life.

I have never had huge numbers of favorites bookmarked on either my home or work computer.  A site would have to be very good with the potential of being used often in order for me to bookmark it.  I organized sites in file folders and it was not a big problem.  Nevertheless I do see the benefits of using a bookmarking service for organizational purposes.  As I try to organize all the information that has been coming to me in this course and as I try to reach out and further research I can see that social bookmarking could be a great tool to use and become proficient at.  As I have just begun working on my masters I can start building up my store of professional learning sites right at the outset.  As we do a fair amount of travelling, either to other countries or back home to visit, it would certainly be advantageous to access all our favorites from anywhere and from any computer.  Previously on our travels we have been using our hotmail accounts to store important sites such as airline, hotel, or travel information sites into emails and send them to our accounts so that we can access this information from any computer.  Beyond being an organizational tool I can see other personal advantages to social bookmarking.  It seems to me that Social Bookmarking can be used as a search engine only it is more selective in its results.  The results that do come up have been evaluated and rated by people and not by a computer running an algorithm.  To refer back to the traveling example we could research a country and tap into other sites that travelers have found helpful.  Using a social bookmarking tool could be a great advantage in sifting through the mass of information to find those valuable sites. 

So far I have only had two frustrations with social bookmarking.  The first is that in order to use it at school, and to use it fully at home, I have had to log into the online site.  This is not a big deal but it is another username and password and yet another favorite on my browse.  For this reason I will still keep those favorites up to date.  My second issue with it has been finding a specific favorite amongst the 50 or so I have.  Nevertheless, I am using the tags and as I get more adept things will be fine.

Social Bookmarking As a Tool for Teaching and Learning

In our discussion group, Katherine asked the question’ “How do you teach organization to students in a Web 2.0 world? Is it important anymore? What is more important process or product?”  As a group we focused more on the process vs. product question and did not get around to discussing the first two questions.  As I read through the Trail Fire for the week I came across this quote from Will Richardson.

“Today, information literacy implies an ability to organize the world around us, and that encompasses the big ol’ Web. While traditional library methods have effectively tamed print resources, the digital content residing on more than one billion Web pages is a different beast altogether.” (Richardson, 2007)

Teaching students the skills necessary to be organized themselves and to organize information has always been an important part of a teacher or librarian’s job and is all the more so now.   Organizing information has certainly been one of the challenges for all of us in our discussion groups so it is little wonder that it is a challenge for students.  Social bookmarking, our tool for the week, can be one of answers to this problem.

The first benefit of social bookmarking for students is that it allows them to bookmark important sites that they can access from any computer.  Most students that we have do not have their own computer so they rely on the family computer or one of the school computers in any of the labs or the library (McGraw Hill).  Having the ability to have their own personal bookmarks that they can build and access could motivate them to start creating their own list of favorites.  This will no doubt be comprised mostly of their own personal favorites but undoubtedly sites that they need for school assignments will slowly creep in.  A second and very important benefit of social bookmarking for students is the ability to tag and then share their bookmarks with other students in the class.  Often, when doing research with students in the computer lab, the place is alive with student’s running back and forth from their computer to their friend’s computer as they show each other sites that they have found.  Often a good amount of time is wasted as they try to read out the URL address while the other student types it into their browser.  With social bookmarking a student could simply save it as a favorite, tag it in a specified way and that site become available to all the students in the class.  Teachers could also find and tag sites and share them with students.  Collaboratively then, a class can build a collection of great resources that every student in the class can access at anytime and anywhere. 

In addition to helping teachers and librarians organize their personal and professional favorite sites, social bookmarking could be a collaborative tool among professionals.  Last year, as the only 5^th grade teacher in our school it fell to me to find any additional materials beyond the curriculum manuals we have to enhance my lessons.  Another school in our district has 6 divisions of grade 5.  Their group naturally collaborated together for their program where as I did not have the same opportunity.  They were always happy to share but it was not a natural thing to do.  Social bookmarking could be one natural way that all the grade 5 teachers could work collaboratively together in the area of gathering valuable on-line resources.  Professional development could also be enhanced in a similar way through social bookmarking. (Richardson, 2009)  As mentioned earlier the tagging process would be a key element to work out within a collaborative group so that maximum benefit can be derived.

Another tool that is similar to social bookmarking in its use of tags is a tool called LibraryThing.  Although Will Richardson referenced this tool in his article on social bookmarking (Richardson, 2007),  LibraryThing seems to be more of a social book club or large reading group that gets sorted out by the books one chooses.  I have only begun to play with it but it seems like a great way to get connected to books through the descriptions and recommendations of others based on other books you have read in common.  Though it is not a bookmarking site it could be another great way to sift through all the book choices out there and narrow it down to something of value to you.

From what I have seen so far social bookmarking has the potential to solve some of life’s inconveniences and open some new power to uncovering great websites.  This could be of great benefit to both teachers and students.  However to fully explore and evaluate this tool and all its potential will take more time and more play.

 

References

Anderson, L. S., & Hildenbrand, E. (2009, September/‌October). Can facebook replace face-to-face? Learning and Leading With Technology, 37(2), 8-9.

Richardson, W. (2007, March 1). Taming the beast: social bookmarking. In School Library Journal. Retrieved from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/‌article/‌CA6420397.html

Richardson, W. (2009). Social bookmarking services. In Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed., pp. 88-98). Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.

Roeder, L. (2009, September 28). 5 social media lessons I learned from working with a Hollywood actress [Electronic mailing list message]. Retrieved from Coppyblogger: http://creatingfame.com/‌video/

Social bookmarking. (n.d.). Teaching today [How-to article]. Retrieved from McGraw Hill Education website: http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/‌howtoarticles/‌social-bookmarking