I really like the idea of social bookmarking. I think this is a wonderful tool to use as an individual, student, teacher, or any other profession. Social Bookmarking is a great tool to use with organizing, saving, and sharing research on any given topic. For instance, in my writing class I have to do a multi-genre research paper, I have a great opportunity to organize the research I find on the web and make tags so that I know what each link is. Also, I can share this link with other bookmarkers who need the same information. One site is diigo.com , and it is a great site for this. You can not only search other tags and find information, but once you tag information you need or want, you can find out others who have saved the same information and can subscribe to their RSS feeds. Social Bookmarking is taking education to a whole new level of learning.
In the classroom, I would use social bookmarking to organize information about subjects that my students are learning in the class. I would have my students create their own diigo account or Google Reader account so that they can be in charge of what they tag and subscribe to, but I will still have access to their sites and can still monitor what they are doing. What is so fantastic about this is that I can set all the information to private, or I can share the information. But for a classroom sake and for my job’s sake, I would have all the students set their tags to private so that way they have control over who is sharing their information. Social Networking is also a great way for you to give good sites to look at if your students are doing research papers. They can go to the site and click on the tag and go to a load of good sites with annotations from the author of the tags and notes they may have on the site.
Social Bookmarking is a great tool to use in the professional arena. It allows you to share good articles, research, news, updates, and so much more with your collegues. It allows you to connect with others in the profession who share the same interests as you, and opens the door for collaborating together. I think that this is such a good source for educators because it motivates teachers to follow up on what is going on with education outside their own school, it allows educators to collaborate with one another, it allows educators to share good articles and research about a particular topic in education, and it allows educators to stay updated with what is current as far as curriculum and technology. On top of all of that, it allows teachers another avenue for support.
I am so excited about using social bookmarking not only in my teaching career and with my students, but I am also excited using it in my personal life and while I am still a student. Also, if you are hesitant to use public social bookmarking sites, there are others that are private and specifically meant for education.
