What is Social Bookmarking and Why is It Important for Education

What is Social Bookmarking?

                                                         Image 1

Social bookmarking enables users to bookmark their favorite sites, just like when you add a web site's URL, or address, into your 'favorites' on any Internet browser, but with (1) the added possibility to access these bookmarks from any computer with an Internet connection, so that the bookmarked sites are not anymore limited to just one computer, (2) the ability to organize your bookmarks into your own created categories, tags, and a variety of ways able to see these bookmarked sites by topic or theme, and (3) the capability of sharing your bookmarks with other users, and learn also from the shared bookmarks of others. One sample of these social bookmarking sites is http://www.Delicious.com, to use it; all you have to do is sign up for a free account and start bookmarking. For a quick tutorial on the use of and an explanation of Delicious.com you can go to http://www.commoncraft.com/video/social-bookmarking.

Why is It Important for Education?

Schools and teachers must look for ways to incorporate into the curriculum the cool new and free technologies that Web has to offer nowadays. These technologies and applications, or what are now called Web 2.0 tools, such as the ones we have discussed in previous posts, and the social bookmarking tool that is explained here, can become great aids for the teachers and the students in the learning process. 

Social bookmarking for example could be used in a research process, giving the students the ability to share the websites they find useful. Delicious, and other social bookmarking tools, provides the possibility to create RSS feeds that list the bookmarked links, teachers can take advantage of these and subscribe to these to follow the direction each group is taking in any search or project. The teachers can also use social bookmarking to provide lists of useful URLs for the students to read prior to starting or during a certain topic, and because of its organization capabilities, resources can easily be organized by class, unit, project, or topic.

Marco Cesar Saenz

Using Web Tools in the Classroom

Image 1 retrieved from http://www.linkbuildingservice.com/social-bookmarking-service.html on November 10, 2012.