BP6_118_Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking has become a rapidly-growing phenomenon in the world of education in recent years. It is being explored and used by teachers, librarians, and students as a means of saving and sharing bookmarks within a community that has a common interest, research topic, goal. Essentially social bookmarking has taken research to the next level. As opposed to conducting a google search; something that many students have become accustomed to, and retrieving hundreds upon hundreds of hits, social bookmarking allows people to retrieve links to sites that others in their community find valuable and appropriate. (teachingtoday.glencoe.com)

There are many social bookmarking applications available today with Delicious being the most popular. This means there is a greater community of people tagging pages, thus making searches more specific and results more appropriate and valuable. Other popular social bookmarking tools; however, are Stumble Upon, Furl, uLinkx, Conntea, Scuttle, Socialbookmarkit, Newsvine, Pixrat, Squidoo, ma.gnolia, and Diigo. (alltipsandtricks.com)

Teachers can use this digital tool to help organize and manage their classes' use of research based sites. They can also use this tool to encourage collaboration amongst students within the school and even nationally or globally. Given the fact that some bookmarking sites provide the function of subscribing to news feeds, students can also gather news on current events keeping themselves informed on issues of the world around them. (teachingtoday.glencoe.com)

Teachers can also use social bookmarking to continue to cultivate their craft by sharing sites, and collaborating with other educators within their school or even districts. They can collaborate together by using specific tags to bookmark sites of interest and appropriateness. (Richardson, W. )

References

McGraw hill education. (2007, Fall). Social bookmarking. Retrieved November 8, 2009, from

teachingtoday website: http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/social-

bookmarking

Richardson, W. (2007, March 1). Taming the beast: Social bookmarking. Retrieved November 8, 2009,

from School Library Journal's website: www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6420397.html

Simonne. (2009, June). Top 10 social bookmarking tools for educators. Retrieved November 8, 2009,

from all tips and tricks' website: www.alltipsandtricks.com/top-10-social-bookmarking-tools-for-

educators