Out With the Old, In With the New
From the teacher’s perspective, social bookmarking can save time and keep one extraordinarily organized. Whereas “regular” bookmarks allow one to organize by single file folders, social bookmarking creates a web-like cross-referencing system through tagging so that a teacher may see the variety of uses for each site. Jackson (2009) noted an example where a particular website would be of interest for two different purposes – the study of alliteration and the study of Langston Hughes. Social bookmarking adds another dose of “Web 2.0-ism” by allowing users to explore the bookmarks of others with the same tags.
A more abstract reason for using social bookmarking in education was offered by Educause (2005): “Activities like social bookmarking give users the opportunity to express differing perspectives on information and resources through informal organizational structures.” Because everyone will tag differently based on his or her opinions, the task of research changes with social bookmarking; instead of searching for a single word, the researcher may be asked to think of the “big picture”, where identifying common themes can help the learner build connections to real-life (or in their mind). An exercise might be to use www.wordle.net to create a word cloud about their research. This forces the student to use the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy (and it looks really cool too!).
Finally, certain social bookmarking sites, such Diigo (formerly www.furl.net), archive all sites that are bookmarked (Hargadon, 2007). Anyone who has done ongoing research has had the unpleasant reminder that the Web is always changing, and that includes even the best of one’s research pages. This archiving service can be very valuable for teachers who have found an extraordinary resource that they want to share with students or for students who are more visual in learning. Furthermore, Diigo allows the user to write sticky notes and highlight material. This could be beneficial in several ways, including sharing information in group settings or guiding students who need additional help.
On a personal level, I am excited to encourage students and colleagues to use social bookmarking as a tool in our district. I feel that it will significantly increase the effectiveness of student research and will encourage them to think about researching differently.
References
Educause (2005, May). 7 things you should know about… social
bookmarking. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/
library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf
Hargadon, S. (2007). Best of social bookmarking. School Library Journal.
53(12). 20. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier.
Jackson, L. (2009). Sites to see: Social bookmarking. Retrieved from
http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/sites/sites080.shtml
Pictures courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.
(Rena - I still can't get the formatting down for APA!)
ReplyDeleteI know. It is fine - everyone is in the same boat here:). I told someone else I might have to call Blogger and ask them to fix it:)! No worries. Excellent job on this.
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