Thoughts on Social Bookmarking

According to the text 7 Things You Should Know About…Social Bookmarking, Social bookmarking is defined as “the practice of saving bookmarks to a public Web site and “tagging” them with keywords.”  I believe social bookmarking in its simplest form is the sharing of resources, or information, with others via the internet in one location such as a web page.  Social bookmarking can be a great tool, and I believe an asset, to both teachers and students.  This is evident for a couple of reasons.  One of the reasons I believe social bookmarking can be an asset to both teachers and students is the fact that we are, in fact, using social bookmarking as part of this class and to accomplish this assignment.

            There a few reasons I believe that social bookmarking can be an asset to teachers.  First, it enables one to create and store a database of sorts, full of teaching ideas, materials, and resources for students.  Being able to have this information readily accessible to yourself, and to your students, can be a great tool.  It would enable you to always have a starting point, or a place to go, for information that is relevant to the class.  This is helpful to you as a teacher because you are able to distribute information to your students and allow them to access the information any time they want, without having to worry about making copies or carrying an excess of books and materials around with you.  The second reason I believe social bookmarking can be an asset to teachers is the fact that it allows for collaboration.  Social bookmarking can allow teachers from the same school to collaborate about ideas for their classroom and share materials.  Or it could allow teachers from around the country, or even the world, to share ideas and resources.  This could be especially helpful in teaching students about the ideas of citizenship in the country or world.

            There are also a few reasons I believe social bookmarking can be helpful to students as well.  First, it can be helpful to any student who has to use outside resources for a class or one who wishes to use outside resources to supplement what he is learning in class.  Social bookmarking would be a good way to store and organize information that was helpful to the student.  Also, much in the same way it could help teachers collaborate it could allow students to do the same.  Students from the same class or across the country could share information they might need for a class or just something that they found helpful in understanding concepts that were presented in class.  It could also allow students to organize and even share information regarding a project or a paper that they are working on that other students may find helpful or just an interesting read.

            I truly believe that social bookmarking can be a great tool.  Without a doubt I am going to start utilizing this tool much more in the future.  This not only will be helpful in organizing information that I need to have access to as a student but also when I start my teaching career.  I will definitely be looking for ways to incorporate social bookmarking in my future as a teacher.