BP4_20091011_Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking can be useful as a way to access a consolidated set of bookmarks from various computer, organize large numbers of bookmarks, and share bookmarks with contacts. (Krause, 2008). Recently, collaborative tagging has grown in popularity on the web sites that allow users to tag bookmarks, photographs and other content. (Golder and Huberman, 2006).

The use of tags allows an individual to set up criteria that is not only meaningful for their purposes, but others may have similar interests or additionally tagged bookmarks that could be shared. I could see this being really useful in a learning environment where students or faculty may be working on a group assignment or project. They teams, or groups, could collaborate on a set of tags and contribute to them as they find relative web sites that would benefit the group.

The advantages of tagging are personal knowledge management; serendipitous access to resources; and enhanced possibilities to share content with emerging social networks. (Vuorikari, May 2007) This could prove extremely helpful in the world of education.

Social bookmarking as a team, or group
- allows individuals and the group to conduct and share research
- allows author and book updates
- allows individuals to follow student research direction
o ie. Teachers following students
- allows sharing of research and information
- creates unintended learning through resource discovery and information
- allows sharing of links to current news and classroom discussions
- allows sharing accounts between educators and students
These are just a few of the advantages to using the tool of social bookmarking for the enrichment of education. Students and teachers alike can all benefit from the use of these tools.

More and more social tagging services are becoming available to the consumer. But, along with the emerging of so many sites a fatigue in social networking has already emerged and there has been dissatisfaction occur. (Vuorikari, May 2007) Will the world wide internet become so engulfed that we will need to look for new and faster ways of utilizing information and tools? That is an overwhelming prospect of what the future may hold. Individuals should allow themselves to grow through these experiences and the use of the social bookmarking is the beginning of large things to come. More collaboration will be created upon much large scales and venues.

References

Vuorikari, R. (2007). Folksonomies, social bookmarking and tagging: State-of-the-art.
Retrieved October 5, 2009 from
http://life.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/misc/specialreports/folksonomies.htm

Golder, S. and Huberman, B. A. (2005). The structure of collaborative tagging systems.
Retrieved October 6, 2009 from http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/tags/tags.pdf

Social bookmarkings, 2007. Retrieved October 6, 2009 from
http://www.teachinghacks.com/wiki/index.php?title=Social_bookmarking_tools