Social Bookmarking

We all value our own opinions; however, when someone else can substantiate something that we think is valuable... well, that makes our opinions even better. When I look through my "bookmarks," I place a great value on those that others have similarly tagged. Not only is this important for me; but, it is invaluable for the students with whom I work. They may find a source that they think is great... If others agree by also tagging it with the same words, then they can feel a little more confident that the information is "useful." At the same time, if they are using a source that no one else uses... or that others have tagged in a negative way (in respect to the legitimacy of the information), then they may conclude that the source is not so great.

Students must be able to make decisions as to the value of their resources. They can not always rely on a teacher or parent (we may not know either). On the other hand, if they can get the "opinions" of thousands of others, they may be able to come to a conclusion on the source's credibility.

Teaching students to use social bookmarking for research, or simply for pleasure, meets a variety of the NETS standards (the majority of Standards 2 and 3); however, we cannot overlook the fact that adding these tools to their repertoires, we are helping them to apply techniques that they already use in new ways (Standard 6-d), helping them to grasp new technology systems (Standard 6-a), and truly assisting in their transitions to becoming lifelong learners (Standard 5-c).