Most people work off of multiple computers: one at work, one at home, maybe a laptop or Blackberry. It never fails that the link you need at one time is saved in the bookmarks of a computer somewhere else. You could Google it again, sure, but who has time for that? Not busy teachers! We probably work from home more than any other profession, and so this problem of leaving the links we need somewhere else is a frequent one.
Enter social bookmarking. Social bookmarking sites allow you to not only keep all of your bookmarks in one place, but also to easily share them with others. One popular site for this is Delicious. You simply create an account, enter links–with a description if you like–and categorize. This categorization, called tagging, allows you to place a single site in many different virtual folders. So, you can tag that neat site on modernizing Shakespeare with Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, English 9…whatever you like. Not only do you not have to hunt through different computers to track the idea down. but neither do you have to dig through all of those folders in your bookmarks.
Often you will see the Share This icon on a website:
This button allows you to quickly send a link to the website you are viewing to any number of social media sites, such as Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, or to email the page to a friend, or even to print a easy to read version of the site. Look in the top right corner of the MTWP page to try it out.
These web 2.0 applications can make your time on the internet much more effective, allowing you to spend time using the internet as a resource instead of an obstacle that has to be conquered. And while this article simply focused on how social bookmarking can manke a teacher’s life easier, there are many classroom applications, as well. How could you use them? Post a comment and share your ideas!
