Social Bookmarking is just one of the aspects of web 2.0 that my T & L in the Networked Classroom course has introduced me to. This is something I had no knowledge and immediately saw the value of this aspect of the technology. Another aspect picked up through my learnings in this course ..is the use of mini youtube clips as teaching tools. Like this one explaining how to use social book marks. I used a few of these common craft videos to introduce both social bookmarking and wiki creation to my Bio II course. My original journey into social bookmarking was using using Delicious. I found the whole idea of social bookmarking very useful. I have often been frustrated, looking for bookmarks that end up being on my school computer while I'm working at home or the other way around. My thinking quickly went to the social end of the bookmarking, scheming ways to use this tool to increase the amount of collaboration that is possible among staff at my school. As I continued to read my RSS I came across information on Diigo, another social bookmarking site. I choose to use this site with my class. I was very excited about the shared research my students might be able to do using this tool. As I introduced this to my students everything went fairly smoothly. Kids were able to log on, share book marks, highlight article and add sticky notes. Life was great! Kids were researching, sharing information, maybe even thinking... then our network changed the rules; kids were no longer able to down load mini tool bar! ARGH!!!! very frustrating...but I'll try again next year.
The take way ... this is a very useful tool, that I have only begun to learn to use. I will continue to push as hard as I can to make sure resources are used to increase the speed and usefulness of our district network. At this point too often decisions are made without consulting educational specialists.
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