The greatest advantages to social bookmarking are the abilities to see them from any computer, and share them with anyone. The necessity to have to use the same computer to do all your work is eliminated with applications like Del.icio.us. Students are able to access the sites they need both at school and at home. Anytime the educational day can be expanded beyond the traditional school hours, a huge advantage has been made.
The ability to subscribe to other people’s bookmarks is also a great attribute of the application (Johnson 2007). It takes away the busy work of combing through research and allows students to focus more on the process of discerning information rather than hunting for it. The idea that it is more important to be able to retrieve and use information than to simply know where to find it (Educause, 2005) is a major movement in the information world.
Students can subscribe to other’s bookmarks through the concept of tagging items for searches. When others tag their bookmarks it benefits the entire interested community (McGillicuddy, 2006). It is very easy for students to feel overwhelmed when doing research online, so having the research find them is a nice bonus.
Del.icio.us can also be used for group projects or classes since you are not limited to a number of accounts and can share passwords. A group could gather resources for a specific topic and build up a library together. These research teams could do a lot of the prior knowledge building for any lesson or unit within any subject. When students can retrieve the content rather than it being given to them, true learning is taking place. This method also speaks to giving up some of the classroom control to students to create an environment that is more project-driven than lecture based.
Although the idea of organizing links and being sent information sounds simple enough, the advantage for students is that it allows time for them to actually synthesize what was found. Students lack the time management skills to both do thorough research and compile that research in an effective manner. Using social bookmarks isn’t a scapegoat, but rather a crucial tool for today’s student. In a world of instant gratification, students need to learn how to access and process information quickly. An application like social bookmarks allows that to happen.
Screenshot of how to subscribe to other peoples' bookmarks in Del.icio.us
References
Educause (2005). 7 things you should know about social bookmarking. Retrieved October 6, 2009, from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf
Johnson, D. (2007). Education world technology center: Doug Johnson: Free is good: It's delightful; it's del.icio.us. Retrieved October 4, 2009, from http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/columnists/johnson/johnson017.shtml
McGillicuddy, S. (2006). Social bookmarking tools pushing collaboration to the edge. Retrieved October 5, 2009 http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid182_gci1195182,00.html
"Using social bookmarks isn’t a scapegoat, but rather a crucial tool for today’s student. In a world of instant gratification, students need to learn how to access and process information quickly." Just like Wikipedia needs to be recognized as a great starting point for more in-depth research and a great place to go for a quick overview of information on any particular topic.
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