Delicious and Social Bookmarking for Education
When I first heard about using social networking in the classroom, I was not thrilled about the idea. I thought that incorporating these types of websites into the curriculum would have more benefits than downfalls. Although I am still weary about their use because of students’ safety, parental dislike, and the inability to control every site, I am starting to warm up to the idea of including social networking in the classroom. When I read about delicious, I started to see a new way that social networking can benefit students and teachers, without very many risks. Delicious, and other social bookmarking sites, allow you to bookmark favorite websites, so that others can visit these sites and comment on them. In order to allow others to search for these sites through delicious (without knowing your site name), you tag these sites according to their topics. For example, my delicious site features links to sites on using digital media in the classroom. My sites are tagged so that anyone searching for “digital media in the classroom”, or “twitter in the classroom”, can view my sites when they use these tags.
Visit my page on delicious and view the sites I bookmarked!
Social bookmarking can be very beneficial in the classroom in many ways. Students can create their own page on delicious, or other sites such as diigo. As they collect websites beneficial to current topics in class, they can bookmark and tag these sites for their peers to view. These sites are very beneficial for group projects. Rather than having to meet up at someone’s house or a common location, students can share their current research through these sites. This also allows the teacher to monitor which members of the group are working, and which members are not participating. If students are doing individual research projects, they can view their peers sites to find beneficial information for their projects. Although this can lead to some students falling under the social loafing effect, making a standard that students must have at least a few (3-4) unique sites bookmarked on their page will keep students from simply copying each other. This will allow struggling students to use their peers’ pages as starting points for their research, until they can discover other pages to make their own. I am much more open to the possibilities of using social bookmarking in my classroom than social networking.
