The Benefits of Social Bookmarking

The Beginning
Social bookmarking - what is it? Social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a public Web site and "tagging" them with keywords. Bookmarking on the other hand, is the practice of saving the address of a Web site you wish to visit in the future on your computer.(Educause Learning Initiative, 2005)

Social bookmarking sites are brand new to me. I have bookmarked sites on a regular basis on my computer but I am the typical bookmarker who bookmarks with little thought to organization and then never goes back to check it out again because it has become too difficult to find. I wonder if using a social bookmarking site will allow me to be better organized and give me easier access to websites.?

As I began my research on this topic, I found myself a little overwhelmed. There was almost too much information to take in. I followed all the websites posted on the trailfire and looked at many of the videos. But like many of the tools we have learned about so far, you just need to jump in and try it out. I signed up for an account with both Diigo.com and Delicious to give each one a fair shake.

The Process
What makes social bookmarking sites so special is the ability to tag your bookmarks - give them descriptors. This allows you to find them again and also lets others who are looking for a simialr topic find sites you have discovered. I find all the hype about "tagging" quite humourous. It seems like this is all new to everyone and that they have discovered something wonderful and exciting. And I suppose they have. And yet as a teacher-librarian, tagging is what we do, just in a more systematic way. In the process of "tagging" our bookmarks, we are using everyday "keywords" instead of very specific subject headings. However, I must ask, in the end, will we simply have too many sites all listed under "technology" or "blogs" or whatever the topic of the day may be?

Steve Hargadon, in his article Cool Tools: Best of Social Bookmarking describes three different sites that all provide social bookmarking cabilities. Each site has something specific about it that distinguishes it from its counterparts. Delicious http://delicious.com/ was the first site to introduce "tagging" and is probably the most popular. Diigo http://www.diigo.com/ allows users to import its bookmarks from Delicious and "allows users to highlight passages and leave comments on Web pages for other Diigo users to see." (Hargadon, 2007) I have also discovered that any bookmark I save to Diigo, I can have Diigo save it to my Delicious account as well. Now isn't that nice that they play together so well. With Furl http://www.furl.net/ you can rate sites as well as access any archived site, even if the site is no longer active.

I haven't quite made up my own mind yet which one best meets my needs. I had some trouble posting the little icon for Delicious and since Diigo is the one now on my toolbar, it may win out by default.

How Will I Use This Personally
How will social bookmarking benefit me and my family personally?

I love the accessibility of it. To know that when I am at work I can now access any website that I may have bookmarked for a later date is awesome. We can't control when we come across something interesting and now we dont' have to wait until we get home - we can bookmark it right away. I had sent an email with a link about cyberbullying to our technology support person recently. I received an email from him to let me know that I had forgot to add the link. I was at work at the time and had to wait to go home to access it from the bookmarks on my computer. If I had saved it to one of the social bookmarking sites, well you know what would of happened.

I also appreciate the fact that once you have a topic you are searching (for example Peru), not only will you have the bookmarks that you have saved but you will now have access to sites others have used as well. (Here is the social part.) As we come closer to our months of travel in South America, this aspect of social bookmarking will come in very handy. "Suddenly, it's easy to find all sorts of other people who have the same interests or passions as you do. And in doing so, you're creating your own community of researchers that is gathering relevant information for you. (Richardson, W., 2009, p. 89) This has huge benefits. "Social bookmarking sites provide a means for individuals to save their bookmarks and share them with a community of others. The advantage in using social bookmarking sites is the human collaboration involved in the searching framework." (Teaching Today, 2007)

There are some downsides to this tool as well. First, you have to use it. You have to get into the habit of saving your bookmarks and then going and checking them out. Secondly, you have to remember what tags you applied to your websites. If you are not consistent or use general enough terms, then it may be difficult finding exactly what you are looking for, especially if you are a prolific bookmarker. I find myself trying to use at least three tags so I have a better chance of finding the page again.

How Will I Use This Professionally
There are many benefits to be found by using social bookmarking in the classroom. Students actually have a place to store sites they find useful to their topic. Teachers can set up groups for students to use and share together using Diigo. "If a student or teacher searches for information on a topic, a social bookmarking site like Del.icio.us or Diigo provides links to sites that other people have found valuable. These sites are not always the most popular, but often they are much more valuable." (Teaching Today, 2007) Using the group bookmarking system, you can gather websites that anyone in the group can access - a wonderful way to work collaboratively with teachers.

Here are some other suggestions from Teaching Today on how to use social bookmarking in the classroom.

1. Students and teachers can move from one computer to another and still have full access to their bookmarks.
2.Students can share their bookmarks with their classmates. Students and teachers can also share collections of bookmarks they have found to be worthwhile.
3.Social bookmarking sites can also help students to quickly find links to important current events and historical events. Some bookmarking sites allow students to subscribe to news feeds on a particular subject of interest. They can then go daily to this site to find the most current news on the subject.

In a school library setting, social bookmarking can be a quick way for library media specialists to create and keep an updated Web pathfinder, without any knowledge of HTML or Web programming needed. Students working in collaborative groups will also find it useful to track one another's Web resources via these public pages. (Fontichiaro, K., 2008)

This may not be the tool for everyone but I am liking the possibilities it offers.


References

Bell, Mary Ann. (2009, September). Playing tag is good for you! MultiMedia & Internet@Schools, 16(5), 40-42. Retrieved from ProQuest Education Journals.

Educause Learning Initiative. (2005). 7 things you should know about... social bookmarking. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf

Fontichiaro, Kristin. (2008, May). Using social bookmarking to organize the web. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 24(9), 27-28. Retrieved from ProQuest Education Journals.

Hargadon, Steve. (2007). Cool tools: best of social bookmarking. Retrieved from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/ca6505695.html?q=cool+tools%3A+best+of+social+bookmarking

Richardson, Will. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Crowin Press: Thousand Oaks, California.

Teaching Today. (2007). Social bookmarking. Retrieved from http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/social-bookmarking

My Diigo Tags

Video-sharing

Wowie, wow, wow (to quote Junie B. Jones)! Wowie, wow, wow!! Those are my first impressions of video-sharing after spending a week weaving my way through YouTube. I enjoyed it so much I got my husband watching with me (although this was not new to him) and then my eight year old daughter. This week we finally had to make the move from "light" speed to "lightening" speed so we wouldn't have to wait while the videos downloaded. Well there is no going back.

YouTube was first introduced to the world in April of 2005 and has grown exponentially ever since. A definition provided by Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube states that YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. There are many uses for YouTube listed by Davies and Merchant in their book Web 2.0 for Schools. A few are:
1. Watch videos
2. Respond to videos by leaving a written comment or rating
3. Watch videos and report them as offensive
4. Select any number of videos and embed them into other sites such as blogs and wikis

Up until this past week I could probably count on one hand how many videos I have watched on YouTube. When your life is busy with work, children, family and course work, you have little spare time and so I have stayed away from social networks such as Facebook and YouTube. This week I have checked out educational videos, music videos, movie trailers and videos on civic politics. I found the site simple to manoeuvre, and once we had high speed up and running, the rest was easy. It became even better after my husband showed me how to change the video into a full screen. Oh the simple pleasures of life. :)

In my exploration of YouTube I mostly followed the links provided in the Trailfire. One video really stood out for me - An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube by Michael Wesch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU. If you haven't seen it you really should go and check it out. After watching this video (twice - I had to share it with my husband) I felt I had a better understanding of what YouTube was all about. Wesch made some very interesting comments and observations. He talks about YouTube being a "celebration of new forms of community - global connections transcending place and time." and how Web 2.0 is about "linking people - in ways we don't even know yet." Isn't that true about the whole web 2.0 experience? I think my all time favourite quote was how he described Gary Brolsma, the guy in the suburbs of New Jersey who made the "numa numa" dance into a world phenomenon by saying that Gary is the "first guy on the floor of this global mixer." I just love the imagery this brings to my mind.



As I explored YouTube, I found my emotional experience to be much like Flickr. I became quite excited at this media format I was discovering for the first time. I enjoyed discovering all of the possibilities that YouTube provided. (And I only touched on a few.) As I wrote down my thoughts for this blog post I found myself easily sidetracked and another half hour gone as I surfed through more video. As much as I enjoyed viewing the videos on YouTube, I don't think you will find my face there. In this space I would much rather be a lurker than a full particpant.

Professionally I can see great value in having access to YouTube. As a teacher-librarian I came across an excellent set of videos by Bob Baker (no, not Bob Barker) on teaching information literacy covering a wide range of topics. It is recommended that if using YouTube with younger students (and wisely, I believe) that videos be embedded in a blog first so students and teachers do not accidentally come across offensive materials. (Davies & Merchant, 2009, p.54) In this way a teacher can transfer a video to their class blog and view and discuss the video outside the YouTube site. As you move into older grades, especially at the high school level, using YouTube gives rise to opportunity for discussion on how to deal with specific types of material. "We would like to feel that schools could play a role in discussing media with unpleasant messages so that students can learn something about how to deconstruct those messages and how to trace safe paths even in the face of undesirable and profane images and comments." (Davies & Merchant, 2009, p. 57)

For many of you, the use of YouTube in your classrooms is a pipe dream. The fear that our children will access inappropriate material has caused school districts across North America to implement the use of Internet filters. Is this a form of censorship or is it truly to create a safe place for our kids to learn? How are we limiting the scope of their learning if they do not have access to sites such as YouTube, Flickr, blogs, etc.?

If these sites remain blocked, can we ethically find ways to get around them. If we know a video is educationally sound, should we still use it to teach and engage our students if we are able to gain access to it through other routes? Joyce Valenza has an article called When YouTube is blocked (way more than eight ways around) which provides us with some alternate methods to using YouTube or perhaps ways of getting around filters. Many videos can be powerful tools to use in teaching and engaging our students, so what are we to do?

As teachers we do have access to TeacherTube but is it a replacement for YouTube? After a quick exploration, it felt like I was visiting its much poorer cousin. I searched the term "information literacy" and did not find any quality videos right off the top.

I believe that it is our job as teachers and teacher-librarians to give students the necessary skills to search the Internet ethically and appropriately. We need to provide them with a road map to journey the Internet without mishap, or to know what to do when a mishap occurs.

So where does this leave us? Personally, YouTube is a fabulous surprise and I know that I will come back to it again and again for both entertainment and to search out professional topics. Professionally, I'm not sure what role YouTube plays in our locked out district. I believe it to have great potential to teach and engage our students. If the videos are relevant, is there anything wrong in teachers using them even though the district has chosen to lock us out?

What would you do? Does the value of YouTube outweigh the decision makers of your district?

References

Davies, Julia & Merchant, Guy. (2009). Web 2.0 for schools. Peter Lang Publishing: New York.

Valenza, Joyce. (2008) When YouTube is blocked. Retrieved from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/1410038141.html?nid=3714

Wesch, Michael. (2008). An anthropological introduction to YouTube. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU

Wikipedia. (2010). YouTube. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

YouTube. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/