Challenge #7 - Social Bookmarking

Has this happened to you?

You sit down at your HOME computer to look for that website you bookmarked yesterday... only to realize you bookmarked it on your SCHOOL computer. Or you back up all of your files at the end of the school year... only to find when you come back in the fall that you forgot to export and save your bookmarks.

It's happened to me -- more than once, I might add. But not anymore, thanks to social bookmarking.

Social Bookmarking in Plain English.



Three Reasons to Use Social Bookmarking Sites

1. Since your bookmarks are hosted on the web, you can access them from ANY computer with Internet access regardless of platform or browser.

2. You get to use whatever "tags" make sense to you to organize your bookmarks. This has been dubbed "folksonomy" -- tagging by the people. This replaces "taxonomy" -- rigidly adopted subject headings provided by someone else, namely snooty librarian-types.

3. The social aspect allows you search other people's bookmarks as well. You can check out the most popular tags, see which websites are most commonly bookmarked, and search other sites that share your tags. Share the love, so to speak.

Getting Started

Delicious is the most popular social bookmarking site, but Google also offers an equally easy to manage bookmarking option that just doesn't offer the "social" part -- meaning you can't view other people's bookmarks, and they can't view yours, but they're hosted on the web for ease of use. Both Delicious and Google Bookmarks offer gadgets for your iGoogle page so you can access them straight from your homepage. Both also offer tools to make bookmarking easy. Simply drag the bookmarking tools up into your web browser's links bar to bookmark and tag sites on the go.

Our Challenge to You:

• Create an account in Delicious (or if you prefer to be anti-social, Google Bookmarks).
• Drag the Delicious bookmarking tools into your browser's links bar. (Google's is at the bottom of your list of bookmarks and looks like this the box to the right.)
• Start bookmarking and tagging -- and NEVER lose your bookmarks again! (Unless, of course, you want to; editing or deleting bookmarks is a simple task.)
• Click on the screencast below for step-by-step instructions to do tasks 2 and 3 above.
  
  

Points of Discussion for Your Blog:

• Is this your first experience with social bookmarking? What are your thoughts?
• Can you see the potential for this in researching, or will you simply use it as a way of accessing your bookmarks from anywhere?
• How can you use Delicious with your students?
  

Take It a Step Further: (Optional)

• Add a Delicious or Google Bookmarks gadget to your iGoogle page.
  
• Explore the sharing and blogging options (both under "settings").
• Explore Pagekeeper, a similar site aimed at teachers that allows you to create lists of websites for students.
  

Want to Know More?

Seven Things You Should Know about Social Bookmarking - by EduCause
Setting Up Accounts/Features in Delicious - By Kitsap Regional Library