Social Bookmarks

Social bookmarks

Del.icio.us has offered us a new way to organize and use our bookmarks. We can tag them, save them and share them. Also, we can view other’s bookmarks and get to know how popular their bookmarks are. If the pink highlight shows many people have save the link, then I may want to take a look. I have been using Del.icoi.us for my subject – Chinese teaching. I opened an account on del.icio.us and saved lots of links about Chinese language and culture there. I would love to share these sources with other Chinese teachers. But I have to point out one short coming of del.ico.us though. Since the pool is built up by all the computer users, there may be chances that some good websites haven’t been discovered and saved yet. That means I may need to go back to use Google as a back up.

Social bookmarks can also be used by students. I may ask my students to build up a pool for a certain subject or topic in my future class. Students may work together to find information online, and share with each other. This can be a preparation phase for a big assignment, e.g. final project. Students may use social bookmarks to get the information that they want, and use digital slide show to present their work. I think students may engage more in their homework by using social bookmarks.

Parents usually want to know what’s going on with their kids and what they are doing online. I am sure they will be happy to get updated with what their kids have found and learned online. They can put a RSS feed on their webpage, and take a quick glance at their kids or even classmates’ progress. They can even join the network and give some suggestions –well, if the teacher permits.