A5.2: Chapter 6-Richardson

Amanda Williams

September 23, 2007

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

TAP: This chapter was intended to inform students and educators of the value of social bookmarking, and how it can be effectively utilized in the classroom.

Claim: Social bookmarking websites make research easier and more convenient for both students and educators by allowing the sharing of favorites and search information.

Evidence: Each day thousands of new users join furl and del.icio.us, saving their favorites and tagging them accordingly. Each time a new favorite is saved and tagged new information becomes available to the whole community. In a way, social bookmarking allows for an extended version of collaborative editing utilizing a component of resource searching and making ideas not only useful to one, but to all. Also, when it comes to organization social bookmarking is one great way to keep resources and research information organized. It makes the whole research process easier for students because obviously not only one person is interested in a subject. Thousands of people are interested in the same topics. Using social bookmarking sites lets all of those like-minded people connect and share resources and creates a web of information, with each person and resource linked together in different ways.

Connections: My only experience with social bookmarking is with the simple concept of bookmarking. I have always found it helpful to save interesting and frequently visited webpage to my favorites while using Internet explorer, simply because it makes returning to those websites much more convenient. The idea of social bookmarking is new and exciting to me as I can see how it works much the same way, using the simple concept of bookmarking. However, adding the social component means double the resources and time spent looking for information. I think that social bookmarking would be especially helpful in a classroom setting where students are asked to do research with a common thread, like literacy.

I read the article titled “7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking,” and it outlined the main points about what it is and how the different websites are used. This chapter was more specific about the differences between three social bookmarking sites: furl, del.icio.us, and jot. I think that del.icio.us is the easiest to use and has all of the basic features I am currently interested in. I am looking forward to using these websites to connect with others with similar interests to me and simplify my research.

I think that social bookmarking could be extremely useful to a speech pathologist. For example, when treating a client with other health problems and you need more information on them, a social bookmarking site could be used to find valuable information that others found helpful. For instance, if you want to know more about Oppositional Defiance Disorder, you could do a tag search and the website would display all the relevant tags. This makes the whole process easier.