Social Bookmarking

I chose to explore the social bookmarking website BuddyMarks because when I initially read through the various choices I discovered that this one is supposedly filtered for inappropriate material. I thought that exploring a filtered site would be the most beneficial because I could see myself using this in a classroom. I found many similarities between Del.icio.us and BuddyMarks. The following are similarities that I felt were important:

• both allow users to store their bookmarks in one specific area
• users can share their list of bookmarks with other users
• users can share their bookmarks with non-users
• bookmarks can be tagged and organized into categories
• users can give each bookmark a personalize title and description
• bookmark lists can have an RSS feed so that viewers are alerted when the user adds or modifies the list
• users can update and delete bookmarks
• users can create a button for their browser toolbar that allows them to bookmark any site into their Buddymarks lists
• users can search for topics or tags
• users can view a list generated by the website of random or recent bookmarks tagged by other users

Despite the similarities I found that these sites varied in appearance and opportunities for the users. BuddyMarks seems to be a more "user friendly" site, while Del.icio.us may be more beneficial for the user who wants a multitude of preferences, settings and options. I believe the Del.icio.us user would be more tech-savy and have developing ideas of different ways to use the site. I think BuddyMarks would be great for the average websurfer. It's appearance is clean, neat and clear. The pages for BuddyMarks are pretty simple to view and navigate. Users are limited, compared to Del.icio.us users on their options for changing or modifying their list. Del.icio.us provides modifying options for the users that may make more sense to the avid web surfer. This type of user would be more familiar with the available options and would be successful in finding those options. BuddyMarks users would probably be the web surfer who uses the internet for very specific and clear objectives.

Keeping these similarities and difference in mind, I begin to think of how social bookmarking could make it's way into my future as an educator. I believe that this tool can be used in my professional and teaching development. I have already started using Del.icio.us instead of bookmarking anything on my laptop or desktop. The online list of bookmarks has already come in handy when I'm away from work or home and I need to show someone a site with information that pertains to our area of interest. I no longer worry that I will lose a important website if/when my computer crashes because I know all I have to do is pull up my Del.icio.us account and all of my links are saved there. Del.icio.us will also help me to stay organized by creating tags and bundles, this way I can categorize my bookmarks. I have already began to keep bundles of teaching resources, educational articles and kid sites. I have also begun to think about the possibility of my students using social bookmarking in our classroom. I have read various articles about ideas for implementing sites like Del.icio.us in classrooms and I'm excited to discover how they may fit into my room. I know that our usage of these tools will be completely decided by the grade level that I am teaching, so any type of implementation of social bookmarking would have to be established after figuring out what the students are capable of doing on the internet. I do not think I would feel comfortable trying to get some of the younger grades into social bookmarking because so much time would be wasted teaching and monitoring their use that our computer time would run out. Older elementary and middle school students could definitely use a tool like social bookmarking. After exploring Del.icio.us and BuddyMarks, I would chose to use Buddymarks in my classroom. I think that the site would be easy to understand for the students and I would not have to spend as much time teaching how to use the tool and monitoring their usage. I would love to have student creating their own Buddymark account and list of bookmarks. This would be an excellent way for students to keep track of their resources for papers, projects or exams. This tool would also allow for students to share their resources with each other. I believe everyone should know how to pull their resources from their surrounding environment. This tool would help students to use each other as sources of information. Students could tag sites that they used on projects or papers. They could also tag sites that connect to class discussions or areas of study. I am also hoping that I could have the students enable the RSS feed option on BuddyMarks so that their fellow students and myself would be notified when they updated their bookmarks. I know that I will continue to develop ideas for using social bookmarking in my class throughout my personal use and experience with this type of tool. I hope to one day pass that knowledge to my students.