Question on Social Bookmarking (Web2.0) sites

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 2, 2007 at 6:28pm

http://www.backflip.com has folders. I 'get" the whole social bookmarking idea but feel like my kids do better when I locate the sites and organize them. If I want them to evaluate sites, I would allow googling.

I don't worry about pornography or other inappropriate sites "popping" up---I just think all this free surfing is a royal waste of time. I'm an "expert" searcher and I can still spend hours looking at stuff I've searched for. I started a site called Curriculum Links, where I gather appropriate sites on a topic--it gives kids enough flexibility to find what they need without slogging through stuff that they don't need. Nothing is a bigger time waster that surfing the 'Net, I know I do it all the time.

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Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on August 2, 2007 at 6:57pm

Nancy, I think that part of our job is to make sure students acquire the skills needed to navigate the web without our help. If we constantly provide them with lists of sites that have been prepared for them, they are not going to gain the searching skills that they need. I'm not saying turn them loose on delicious or google immediately, rather build up skills, starting from teacher created lists, to teacher created search engines such as rollyo or google co-op , to social bookmarking and search engines.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 4, 2007 at 8:58pm

I certainly agree that students need to be able to search out information but I also think that time is very important to teachers and elementary students. Just as I might bring books in from the library to save time, I point to the sites that are worth a look. It's as important for my students to know how to find info in books, interview experts for info, or call the refernce librarian at the local library as it is to find a site by "Bob from Cleveland" on a topic they might be interested in. Understanding and sense making of what they read is more important to me than being able to find a site that has the information. It might be different if my students were middle schoolers and high schoolers.

If they went on a search for info they would end up at the 3-5 best sites anyway. That's my logic and I'm stickin' to it! haha!

PS Why should I let somebody else determine the sites my kids see...(through social bookmarking, etc) when I know where the best stuff is Finished whining, N.

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Permalink Reply by Colette Cassinelli on August 3, 2007 at 9:44am

When introducing a new topic, I too usually provide a few starting weblinks for students to use - but that it just it - a place to start. The power of social bookmarking really is in the connections. One a site has been bookmarked in del.icio.us - students can then see if others have also bookmarked this site. Sometimes the #'s can offer validity that others also found this site "good enough" to bookmark (but it still must be evaluated). The second component is to teach the students to sniff through the tags of matching sites. Millions of people are out there tagging their bookmarks and if you spend some time surfing through other people's bookmarks with the same tags - you can find some pretty good websites. What if you took all of your curriculum links and bookmarked them on a social bookmarking site so after the students have explored your sites they could then sniff through the links of matching tags. The kids wouldn't be wasting time searching and you might find some gold mines. It might be worth a try??

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 6, 2007 at 8:07am

Philosophically I agree with what you are saying but it still boils down to good use of student time. Here's an example of what I do--Titanic in the Classroom Curriculum Links. Again, I ask, why should my kiddos spend hours looking for info--when they will eventually end up at these sites anyway?

Classroom searching, at the elementary level, isn't data forensics---they are not searching for the Holy Grail of information---they are distracted by every side bar and pop up. . I know I seem a bit grumpy, but I feel strongly about use of some of the Web 2.0 technologies that is in opposition of the masses. Determine the outcome, then see if there is a tool that helps---if not don't use it.

PS--One time when I first started doing webpages, I looked for 2 1/2 hours for a coffee cup icon---searching is tiring!!! N.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Mirtschin on August 3, 2007 at 5:21pm

wow, thanks for this. I too would love to know which ones do. So far I have used del.icio.us, and have put some much into it but I have all my favourite travel and holidays stuff in there, plus all my valuable school links. Would prefer just to share the subjects within my school links as I am sure that others arent so interested in the other bits. Any ideas on this. I do enjoy social bookmarking and love its sharing ability. So Seshagiri, do I need to set up separate del.icio.us sites, especially if I am presenting to say accounting teachers and want to keep just the accounting links to share.

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Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on August 3, 2007 at 10:38pm

Anne you can mark delicious bookmarks that you don't wish to share as 'private' - set up is through the settings page.

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Permalink Reply by Jeri Hurd on August 6, 2007 at 5:47am

I know--I still find myself compulsively wanting to stick things into folders. But if you read David Weinberger (Everything is Miscellaneous), there are good reasons for keeping bookmarks in a pile, as long as they are well tagged. So I'm trying to resist my folder impulse and keep everything loose. In fact, I think I'll play around with that with my students this year, and see which works better and promotes serendipitous findings--folders or piles.

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Permalink Reply by Shane Grundy on August 6, 2007 at 10:13am

One really good social bookmarking tool that I'm currently playing with is diggo (http://diggo.com). It was recommended to me by my school board tech consultant. Not only does it allow you to create a social bookmarking page, but allows you to annotate webpages - to highlight and leave "sticky notes" for your kids to read. While it doesn't have folders as per M. Seshagiri's request - with the free toolbar for FireFox, IE, or Flock you can access all the bookmarks from your web browser - almost like importing them - only everytime you update the site, you won't have to reimport!

While you can't use folders to organize your bookmarks, you can use tags, and my favourite - groups. I plan to make a group for each of my classes - this sets up a separate group webpage that you can use with a list of links and annotations, even forums! When I taught elementary I would have used a different group for each unit. Now in Jr. High it'll be a different group for each class. It's a slick little site - check it out! If you're interested I wrote a little more in-depth review of diigo here: http://theclassroom.ca/2007/07/31/using-diigo-for-organizing-the-we...

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Permalink Reply by Cyndi Danner-Kuhn on August 25, 2007 at 8:31pm

Well I just found this discussion, and I may be late, but I'll add my two cents. I use delicious for bookmarking on the fly and then I move many to another one called Portportal. http://guest.portaportal.com/cyndidannerkuhn.
I like the way I can organize things. I teach Instructional Technology to future teachers in the College of Education & Technology and of course they share sites with me, as well as using my website and social Bookmarking sites as a resources. My website is http://cyndidannerkuhn.info/ and you can get to both my social Bookmarking site form there.

I Would love for you and any other teachers to join into my Classroom 2.0 Fall college course discussions at http://tecs390fhsu.ning.com/

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Permalink Reply by Bonnie Lindgren on February 18, 2013 at 3:21pm

Symbaloo - visual bookmarking. Portaportal.

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Permalink Reply by Ruchita Parat on February 18, 2013 at 9:36pm

Hi,

Nice discussion topic you have raised. I am running a summer camp for kids at California named as US Hindi Foundation. Can anyone tell me how delicious or any other bookmarking site will help me. what are the features which can be helpful to communicate with community. 

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