Social Bookmarking

Originally, I checked out two products, Diigo and Delicious. Actually I had seen both at a workshop some years before and so I resurrected my accounts with the ever popular 'forgot password' button. Wow! They had both changed quite a bit and I had only set up the accounts, never used them. I decided that since I teach elementary students, I needed the simplest one to use. That would be Delicious. For example, I teach every student in the school computer applications and internet safety and use. I could set up tags by grade level and/or topic. I could give the students the URL and the rights to add to the content as well depending on the age group. It could also be possible they would have to show me the site they found on a particular topic and ask permission to add it. It’s a great way to share resources by topic for their collaborative projects. Evaluating my sites, adding and creating their own for such a project on say, internet safety, would meet NETS-S 2-6.

As frequently happens on the web, things change. Not always for the better. I have learned using anything on the web requires patience. After working for an evening exploring a Delicious account I set up to try my hand at social bookmarking, and another two evenings trying to add it as a gadget on my Blogger page, I found that Delicious disabled this feature owing to increased spam incidences. My next step was to notify my professor that my assignment was on the fence and to ask for suggestions as well as to contact the Delicious support staff. Both have been very amicable. I thought perhaps that I could add it as a link, but in doing so Blogger says the link gadget is broken. As I write, the Delicious support staff is trying to see what they can work out for me.  So far no one can fix the problem so you won’t see a gadget for it on the right just yet.

But what do I think of Social Bookmarking? Well, I’m a slow convert. Having both a science and education background where taxonomy is king in both areas, it’s hard for me to think about being less formal and using whatever taxonomy comes to mind to organize my bookmarks. I have never had a problem organizing my bookmarked folders and the Chrome browser lets me use my bookmarks at home and work. Using a less formal method of organizing bookmarks called ‘folksonomy’, a term used by Will Richardson in his book, “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom," means that anyone can give multiple tag names to any website so that it can be found under multiple tags in case you forget exactly what you used. Social bookmarking sites take it a step further by allowing you to share who else has tagged the site and they can see yours. You can also see how many people have tagged that site. You may find other like-minded individuals who are searching the same topics as you and so you can follow them and vice versa to the benefit of expanding your searches. Now this is just what science and education majors do: they share their results and ideas. So in that sense, I’m on board. Tags anyone?