Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Social Bookmarking

              I recently got an account on a social bookmarking site called Delicious. Social bookmarking is a Web 2.0 tool that can be very useful. As I found a site I liked or thought would be useful, I added the link, gave it a name, gave a description of the site, and added tags. Tags are key words that can be searched and can help organize links by subject. Social bookmarking is a more effective way to sort bookmarks rather than saving to favorites on a Web browser. When bookmarks are saved on a Web browser, they can only be accessed by that particular computer. Social bookmarking allows anyone to access the links from any device with Internet.
                Social bookmarking sites can be used by anyone. Even if someone does not have an account, they can go on the site and search tags and find links to what they are looking for. This tool can be very useful for research, finding recipes, writing an academic paper, professional purposes and many other uses. It is also useful for sharing resources with others. This tool is “social” in that the user becomes a part of a large network of users in which everyone shares information with each other.
                Social bookmarking is useful as a teacher in several ways. As teachers find sites that are considered professional development, they can save them to their account for future reference, or to share with colleagues. Teachers can use this tool to collect appropriate links for students to access for a research project. Students can also create their own account to organize and save sources for educational purposes. For my purposes as a graduate student and teacher, I gathered sites that relate to my blog topic and class content as well as sites that I found personally interesting as an educator. Some of my favorite resources on my list include blogs by teachers, articles about Web 2.0 tools, some informative videos, professional development information, and sites with helpful tips for teaching 21st Century learners. My bookmarks can be accessed and used by other professionals in my field to improve their teaching practices.

                As I created my bookmarking site, I realized how user-friendly this tool was and how helpful it is to be able to access these sites so quickly. The site has a button that you can drag to your browser toolbar so that when you find a site you like, you can just click the button and it will automatically save to your Delicious account. The tags are a way to keep the links organized, and another way is a feature in which you can “stack” your links into lists by topic. This site also allows you to import bookmarks from “favorites” in your browser. You can follow profiles or stacks that you find interesting in order to build your repertoire.
                I will continue to use this tool to organize and save links that I find interesting. I highly recommend social bookmarking for anyone who wants to be able to find sites quickly and easily without having to search for them all over again.

2 comments:

  1. Beth,
    I must honestly say this is one project that I enjoyed. I was ignorant to how social bookmarking really works. After using Delicious, I have found that all of my teaching resources that are used online are together now. I had previously listed all of my sites on a Word document but now this is much easier, one click away. I checked out your Delicious site as well and if I see something I would like to use I will just copy the link.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beth,
    I totally agree with you on wishing I would have known about this sooner. I would have so many resources that I have just lost over the years because I didn't save them well enough. I like using this site as professional development, by saving articles and things I have read through my career, and I am definitely going to use it to keep up with articles, videos, and other things I need during instruction in my classroom. I loved looking at things that you are interested in reading in terms of professional development and look forward to looking at more of your sources and finding things I can tag as well.

    ReplyDelete