Social bookmarking - Teaching and Learning Activities

[Steve Mackenzie]

Hello Colleagues,

If you have time to help me i would be most grateful.
I am presenting at e-learning symposium at my university (DMU) on Social Bookmarking

I think many of us recognize the usefulness of social bookmarking for our personal use, i would be interested to hear how you have incorporated social bookmarking into a teaching and learning activity for your students. Perhaps this may be tagging activities, searching activities and especially secondary activities after bookmarks have been tagged.

if you can give a brief overview - i''ll highlight how other teachers are making use of social boomarking to help inspire those teachers in our university who are unaware of the usefulness of this tool.

Many Thanks, Steve

[Danielle Heaton]

Just from my experience using del.icio.us, I think that it would be a good idea to bookmark sites for younger students to use when learning how to research. I used to use the bookmarks toolbar, but the number of sites became overwhelming for the students (third graders). Just an idea - I'd like to have more ideas as to how to get the students to actually use the program!

[John Fuller]

I am still a student, but in my field work and internships, I have used social bookmarking accounts for links my students need to complete assignments or for "safe" sites for my students to use for research. The accounts also have educational games and such on there for the students to use in and out of the classroom.

[Anely]

I also use social bookmarking accounts for safety issues. Having a bookmarking site allows students to have multiple resources at their disposal without having to conduct much time-consuming searches on the internet.

[Renee Fox]

Like the previous two posters, I have also used social bookmarking to help younger students with research. I use my del.icio.us account and give them the full address with the tag included (for example del.icio.us/username/americanrevolution for an American Revolution assignment) and there being 5 sites instead of giving young students the task of finding sites at their reading/comprehension level makes the task less overwhelming and also of course because of safety issues.

In older grades, social bookmarking can be used for students to share their resources with each other on topics that interest them, topics they are researching etc. to expand their resources easier and much faster.

[Steve Mackenzie]

Thanks to Danielle, John and Renee for your recent contributions. The strong theme i get from all of you is:

* for beginners setup a pre-determined reading list that guides the students to suitable material. (they can gain more autonomy, later when they are more familiar with the technology and the subject matter).

@Danielle -if i am correct third graders are 8 year olds - i was wondering if you had tried looking at any social boomarking sites that are geared up for kids (my work is mainly with adults, but i welcome all discussion on this matter). If i am right about the age i am wondering whether there are potential problems for this age group using del.icio.us. Search results may mean they stumble across some unsuitable tags. What do you think?

@Danielle, John & Renee diigo is an other social bookmarkong site that allows you to create groups - it might be worth taking a look. you might find the different approach more suitable.

Also initially for Danielle, but John and Renee also if you are not familiar, learning to build a network is a very powerful and useful way to be alerted to good resources. The subscriptions facility is another method that could be useful

thanks again
Steve

[Susan Felix]

As a current teacher and graduate student I find the idea of creating educational social bookmarks intriguing. Simply providing students with access to the web and letting them try and find information on their own often leads to useless and inappropriate web pages. Providing students with a list of bookmarked websites would help alleviate this problem. While I do try to bookmark sites for my students, it often winds up cluttering the common computers in our lab.

Before this discussion I had never heard of social bookmarking. I think that having multiple educators create bookmarks would ease the pressure on the individual teacher to find everything for themselves. In addition, by giving multiple educators the ability to edit the bookmarks, it could help cut back on dead links, which in my experience is a big problem with searching the internet. I’m going to research this topic more and talk to my colleagues to see about staring one for our school. Are their any websites that I should begin with? Are there any that cater to elementary school students?

[Steve Mackenzie]

Hi Susan,

I think what you are proposing is an excellent way to harness new technology to make you and your colleagues life easier.

I think diijo is probably a good social bookmarking platform to use as you can easily set up and co-ordinate a distinct group with the ability to comment and discuss with each other.

when you say "Are their any websites that I should begin with?" do you mean general websites on elementary level education?

I've included a couple of ning networks that might be useful and a search link for 'elementary school' on diijo.


http://web2oh4teachers.ning.com/
http://onlineproj4tchrs.ning.com/
http://groups.diigo.com/group_mana/search_groups?keywords=elementar...

if you want to setup a test at anytime before you talk with your colleagues, to give you a feel for how it might work - I'll contribute to get you going

Steve

[Steve Mackenzie]

I've got this J thing going on with diigo - hopefully I've exorcised it now :-)
the diigo link should be, diigo

[WK]

You are most welcome to use a podcast on Social Bookmarking that I have created.

I am a big fan of social bookmarking and can help you can add these items within your Learning Management System, if you are wanting to utilize this with an online course.

Let me know if I can be of assistance :)

Whitney

[Steve Mackenzie]

Hi Whitney,

thanks for your offer i will keep it in mind - not personally being a great lover of long podcasts - i like the idea of pod bursts.

cheers
Steve