Social bookmarking has several benefits to the educational world as well as a few disadvantages. This web-based service will save your favorites and organize them by tagging them with terms that you pick. It will sort them into several areas simultaneously. Other users will save similar tags and you can link into each other’s bookmarks when searching topics. This opens a larger resource for all users. You can also search by popularity in a topic area.
Del.icio.us is the Web’s largest bookmarking site. It is unfiltered, so it may not be appropriate for students but it is free and easy to use. It will enable educators to develop a broad set of resources and share them with other educators. Another asset of using Delicious is that it can be accessed on any computer with Internet connection. Among the many ways that social bookmarking can be helpful in education are that it can support research, lectures, can be used to build communities, can be used to support individual and group projects, can be used for professional development, for informal formative feedback and it can be used to manage content abilities.
A few of the disadvantages of using Delicious are that it requires an online connection at all times to operate, it is impossible to control the users’ vocabulary, there is an inconsistency of terms used, there is a lack of precision, there is no competitor on the market. Although Delicious is simple and efficient to use, it is not a social network. The last disadvantage is the information load that becomes large takes more time and attention to browse through. In spite of these disadvantages, social bookmarking adds many advantages to its users, both in the educational world and on a personal level. Among these attributes are the ability to create collections of information, to manage marked information, to personalize that information, to utilize search options, to find information for research, to evaluate that information and finally to collaborate and communicate with others.
Social bookmarking is a Web 2.0 tool that’s time has come. It has valuable and practical usage for many of us. It will change as the technology changes but for today it is an excellent tool to organize your own information.
References:
http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/sites/sites080.shtml
Article by Lorrie Jackson
Education World®
Copyright © 2009 Education World 04/18/2006
Updated 06/05/2009
http://www.teachinghacks.com/wiki/index.php?title=Social_bookmarking_tools
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2413801/The-Role-of-Delicious-in-Education
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