Social+Bookmarking

===[|What is Social Bookmarking?] * [|del.icio.us] * [|Furl] * [|Social Bookmarking in Ed] * [|Tools] * [|Resources] *===

What is Social Bookmarking?
Instead of just bookmarking websites that we view on our local computer, we can now do this via web-based services, which is known as [|Social bookmarking]. Probably the two most well known are [|Furl] and [|del.icio.us]. Bookmarking via these online services allows us to share our online discovery of information sources and in turn the discoveries of others are also shared with us. Thus the location and sharing of information becomes social in nature, allowing us to connect to those who have similar interests. Ideas and resources are shared with the network for its betterment. We can now read and connect with what others read, as well as what they write, and becuase it is web-based we can do it from anywhere we have an internet connection! When bookmarking a website, unique keywords or '[|tags]' can be attached to that item by the user. This system of tagging by users has become known as a '[|folksonomy]' as opposed to the traditional taxonomy systems used by libraries. Though this may at first glance seem chaotic, over time users interested in particular topics may develop a system of tagging that is accepted and adopted by a particular community.

[|Social Bookmarking in Plain English]: [|The Common Craft Show] media type="custom" key="201741"

Wikipedia entry for [|Social Bookmarking]

**[|del.icio.us]**
[|Learning 2.0 and del.icio.us] podcast tutorial. [|Top 10 ways to use del.icio.us] from [|Lifehack.org] [|del.icio.us help page] [|Screencast video] on using del.icio.us More del.icio.us help: http://personal.strath.ac.uk/d.d.muir/Delicious1_2.pdf and more del.icio.us help: http://fcit.usf.edu/laptop/pdf/delicious.pdf

**[|Furl]**
Furl takes a snapshot of an entire page when you create a bookmark using it. A copy of the page is saved for you and it can still be accesssed even if the original page goes offline. Only you have access to these saved pages. Furl gives you the ability to do a full text search of any saved pages or tags attached to pages and even search the entire community of Furl users for keyword matches. You can organise your bookmarks into folder topics and also look at how other people are organising their bookmarking. You also have the choice of which folders are public and which are for your private use only. Furl also faciliates the exporting of bookmarked sources into standard referncing formats for reports and as a zip file for backing up or transferring. Most importantly, Furl can generate an [|RSS] feed from bookmark folders. That means that your bookmarks can be sent to anyone who picks up that feed, just like the news and search feeds we looked at in previous sessions. Any time you update a folder with a new bookmark, subscribers to that feed will be notified of the update. Even if someone doesn't use RSS, they can still find out what you are bookmarking via email from Furl. Imagine the possibilities...

**Social Bookmarking in Education**
1. If your class is studying a particular topic, create a folder that your students can subscribe to. As you locate relevant resources, they will get an updated feed of relevant resources each time you add something. 2. If you wanted to tailor information to individual students, create a folder for each student and have them subscribe to their individualised feed. 3. Create a shared bookmarking account that a class or group of students could contribute findings on a topic to. 4. Students with individual accounts could contribute to a class topic by using an agreed uopn tag for any information they locate (eg. a course code or something similar). A search for this tag would then create an RSS feed that all students could subscribe to, allowing them to see what sources others in the class have found on the topic of interest.

With new Courses of Study on the horizon for upper school, teachers may want to bookmark resources that can be shared with colleagues via RSS or Email.

Social Bookmarking Tools
There are [|other tools for social bookmarking] out there, it's a matter of looking at what each can do and deciding what best suits your needs. Good luck with your exploration everyone!

Resources
The above outline and ideas are from [|Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms] by [|Will Richardson], published by Corwin Press. Find out more about Furl in this [|Furl Guide] (PDF document) from [|Classroomhelp.com] [|‹ RSS][|up]