Social bookmarking will prove to be a more organized way of saving, viewing, accessing, and sharing my weblinks with colleagues and students. Delicious is one of the most popular websites, but FURL is available too, according to Rebecca Hedreen, Distance Education librarian at Buley Library, Southern Connecticut State University. She says, “Social bookmarking is just one of the ‘newest things’ sweeping the Internet” (Hedreen, 2005). The great service about social bookmarking is tagging and sharing; the user can save it on their own personal archive page, just as before, but it is more easily accessed due to the keywords you save it under, organize the data, sort it, post it, then communicate with other users, making it a great method for disseminating information. These are free services; also, there are social bookmarking services specifically aimed at certain audiences, such as Flickr, a photo service, and Connotea or CiteULike for researching academic subjects. Any educator or student can categorize their findings from any computer since this asset is web-based, and save their research, adding the URLs for later use.
On Web Worker Daily.com’s site, Doriano Carta uses Delicious as a social networking tool, including RSS feeds. Carta states, “This is a powerful collaboration tool and something that could prove useful for clients and projects.” This site demonstrates how anyone can make their own collection to contribute online.
Universities are beginning to incorporate social bookmarking tools, in addition to other forms of technology, to break down the traditional classroom walls. Baylor University is one such academic setting. Gardner Campbell, director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning, is one of the many faculty members encouraging development in classroom technologies and implementing them in his own classes. He reports that the school learns more from their failure than their success. It is a slow process, but that students using more technology in and beyond the classroom will help them become more engaged in their learning. Campbell said, "One of the particular things I do is to help facilitate how to incorporate technologies into their practices. The particular work I'm doing with information technology spans from new media to various kinds of online communication” (2009). One source is a social bookmarking Website called Delicious, where users can tag Websites, pictures, articles, and more, then share them with specific others, or a general audience.
Associate professor of Management Blaine McCormick, uses Delicious to post articles for his class from the Wall Street Journal as a classroom assignment. Surveying his students, he found many of them gathered their information through technological devices. He has his students working online now (2009).
Delicious and other social bookmarking websites are paving the way for resourceful, collaborative education in the present and future.
Carta, D. (2009, September 16). Roundup: Create Collections of Useful Things to Share Online. http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/09/16/roundup-create-collections-of-useful-things-to-share-online/
Hedreen, R. (2005, February 3). Social Bookmarking in Education. http://frequanq.blogspot.com/2005/02/social-bookmarking-in-education.html
Thompson, J. (2009, November 3). Professors mesh with new gadgets: Technology is being integrated into various BU classes. The Lariat Online. Retrieved from http://www.baylor.edu/lariat/news.php?action=story&story=64169
Fantastic post, Lorri! "...students using more technology in and beyond the classroom will help them become more engaged in their learning." They will own it.
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