Social bookmarking allows multiple users to save their favorite sites, articles, and even podcasts on the Web-instead of inside your browser-making them accessible from home, school, the library, or anywhere with Internet access. (DesRoches, 2007)
Social bookmarking has quickly becoming a popular way for teachers and students to store, classify, share, and search links, all of which are gathered by many users. I know you are wondering, how is it used in the real world. Well, I am an educator, so I've done some research on the educational use of social bookmarking.
How can school librarians use this tool?
That's the beauty of social bookmarking. With a shared username and password, librarians can bookmark sites that relate to a specific classroom's curriculum or research project, select books and write short stories or long evaluations in which readers can review, rate and recommend to others just by tagging them as their favorites.
How can classroom teachers use this tool?
Teachers can house specific research information as tags. for instance, if you are a biology teacher teaching about endangered species, as your students search the web and find interesting sites that would relate to endangered species, they can bookmark it. The tag can say something like endangered species. So, when classmates or other students in the school go to find research about endangered species, they can simply type in endangered species and find all the sites that were tagged by previous students. Collaboration at work!
Here's an idea that Michelle Rethietsen had for the use of social bookmarking in the classroom.
Del.icio.us offers an MP3+podcast tag combination, which also allows users to post their own podcasts and then create RSS feeds. Planning a school trip? Save links to hotels, activities, and transportation by using tags such as "travel" and "school trip." You can even include interesting bookmarks on your blog. Teachers and students use the tool to tag interesting reviews to recommend books and DVDs for the library. (Rethietsen, 2007)
Richardson stated, "One obvious application is to have collaborative groups, classrooms, or even entire districts decide on a unique tag that everyone can use when they bookmark something of interest." (Richardson,2007)
References
DeRoches, D. (2007, January). All Together Now. School Library Journal, Vol.53
Issue 1, p33-33, 1p
Rethietsen, M. (2007, September, 15). Product Pipeline. School Library Journal, Vol.
132 Issue 15, 16-17, 2p
Richardson, W. (2007, March). Taming the Beast. School Library Journal, Vol. 53
Issue 3, p50-51,2p
Excellent, Emily:)
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