Social+Bookmarking

=Social Bookmarks Definition=


 * Social bookmarking allows you to store bookmarks for your favorite websites on the internet, rather than on one particular computer.** It also allows you to "tag" or label each bookmark with keywords that will help you to easily find that bookmark. So your bookmarks can follow you around -- from home to work or wherever.

media type="file" key="Bookmarking in Plain English.flv" width="360" height="270"This video -- by [|The Common Craft Show] -- is the best introduction to what social bookmarking is and how to do it.

The "social" aspect is the most powerful part of these tools. Of course you can keep specific bookmarks private but you can share your other bookmarks with your friends and the world. But the best part is you can use other people's bookmarks, whether you know them or not, to find good websites you may want to bookmark, saving you time! Ask me to show you an example.

You have complete control over how you organize your bookmarks. Gone are the days of putting bookmarks into folders. Doing this restricts a website to one location and one topic, when it really might fall under numerous topics. When you add a website to your social bookmarks, you assign it [|tags]. These tags are single keywords that you create to help you categorize a website. You can assign as many tags to a website as you like.
 * //Tagging//**

BUT your tags aren't the only ones you will use. Click on the number of times a website has been saved. It will open a window showing all the people that saved that website, any comments they added and the tags they gave it. This is where you may find someone whose bookmarks may be of use to you. You can even use RSS to subscribe to particular person's bookmarks based on a specific tag so you will be notified when they bookmark something else with that tag.

__Popular social bookmarking sites:__
Del.icio.us [|[http://del.icio.us]] Mister Wong [] Blogmarks [[|http://blogmarks.net]] Diigo [[]] StumbleUpon [[|http://www.stumbleupon.com]]

__Educational benefits / classroom applications:__

 * Network with other educators around the globe who share your interests.
 * Create social bookmark accounts for your school's academic departments. Teachers within the department all contribute to the growing database of web resources.
 * Contact other people for professional networking, based on their social bookmarks.
 * Allow yourself and your students to share bookmarks on research topics. Have students review the website and rate it in the notes section.
 * Subscribe to someone's bookmarks via RSS and receive updates whenever they add new websites.
 * Collaborate on projects with other schools, sharing bookmarks between all participating communities.
 * Search sites that have already been recommended by others. To make it even easier, you can use the [|Social Media Search].

__Concerns and solutions:__

 * There are no standards for tagging. You create your own tags, which may be different to what someone else would come up with for the same website. Teachers are encouraged to come up with a class list of standard tags whenever students are working on a collaborative project. This will prevent good websites from slipping through the cracks when students are searching by tags.
 * Some students might sit back and wait for others to provide good websites for a research project, rather than making their own significant contribution. Teachers can monitor who has been adding bookmarks and who has not.
 * Students who add inappropriate websites to their bookmarks are essentially sharing them with their classmates. Teachers should discuss with their students the school's Acceptable Use Policy, as well as issues of cyberethics and self management.

__Real-world examples from teachers:__

 * [|Andrew Robitaille (eLearning integration teacher) del.icio.us bookmarks]
 * [|Jody Hayes (primary teacher from NZ) del.icio.us bookmarks]
 * [|Tami Brass (teacher in Minnesota) del.icio.us bookmarks]
 * [|Bill Tozier (educator from Michigan) del.icio.us bookmarks]
 * [|mrichme (educator) del.icio.us bookmarks]
 * [|Bud Hunt (educator from Colorado) del.icio.us bookmarks]
 * [|Suzanne Tate (educator from Melbourne) del.icio.us boomarks]
 * [|JoNelle Gardner (Elementary Technology Teacher) del.icio.us bookmarks]

__Further reading:__

 * [|Sites to See: Social Bookmarking] - an //Education World// article by Lorrie Jackson
 * [|All Together Now: Social Bookmarking offers a new way to store and share web sites] by Donna DesRoches (School Library Journal)

__Tutorials:__
=Further reading/exploration=
 * [|What are tags, and how do I use them?] - from the del.icio.us help page
 * [|Social bookmarking] - a how-to article featured in //Teaching Today//
 * Tagging to help Teachers
 * [|Using Delicious in the Classroom] This is an 8 minute youtube video

Read [|more about tagging]....

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