What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.
In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.

What is the History Behind Social Bookmarking?

The concept of shared online bookmarks dates back to April 1996 with the launch of itList, the features of which included public and private bookmarks. Within the next three years, online bookmark services became competitive, with venture-backed companies such as Backflip, Blink, Clip2, ClickMarks, HotLinks, and others entering the market. They provided folders for organizing bookmarks, and some services automatically sorted bookmarks into folders (with varying degrees of accuracy). Blink included browser buttons for saving bookmarks; Backflip enabled users to email their bookmarks to others and displayed "Backflip this page" buttons on partner websites. Lacking viable models for making money, this early generation of social bookmarking companies failed as the dot-com bubble burst — Backflip closed citing "economic woes at the start of the 21st century". In 2005, the founder of Blink said, "I don't think it was that we were 'too early' or that we got killed when the bubble burst. I believe it all came down to product design, and to some very slight differences in approach."
Founded in 2003, del.ici.ous pioneered tagging and coined the term social bookmarking. In 2004, as del.icio.us began to take off, Furl and Simpy were released, along with Citeulike (sometimes called social citation services), and the related recommendation system Stumbleupon. In 2006, Mag.nolia, Blue, Dot, and Diigo entered the bookmarking field, and Connectbeam included a social bookmarking and tagging service aimed at businesses and enterprises. In 2007, IBM released its Lotus Connections product.

Why Should I use Social Bookmarking?
All tag-based classification of Internet resources (such as web sites) is done by human beings, who understand the content of the resource, as opposed to software, which algorithmically attempts to determine the meaning of a resource. Also, people tend to find and bookmark web pages that have not yet been noticed or indexed by web spiders. Additionally, a social bookmarking system can rank a resource based on how many times it has been bookmarked by users, which may be a more useful metric for end users than systems that rank resources based on the number of external links pointing to it.

Basically?
-More Accesible to the Users
-Is human controlled instead of software controlled
-Humans can use their own research skills to find more specific things and provide those skills to others

Why Shouldn't I use Social Bookmarking?
From the point of view of search data, there are drawbacks to such tag-based systems: no standard set of keywords (a lack of a controlled vocabulary), no standard for the structure of such tags (e.g., singular vs. plural, capitalization, etc.), mistagging due to spelling errors, tags that can have more than one meaning, unclear tags due to synonym/antonym confusion, unorthodox and personalized tag schemata from some users, and no mechanism for users to indicate hierarchal relationships between tags (e.g., a site might be labeled as both cheese and cheddar, with no mechanism that might indicate that cheddar is a refinement or sub-class of cheese).

Basically?
-No Standard Use of Vocabulary
-Misspelled Tags can cause entry into the wrong web page
-No direct way to tell if a topic is specific unless the viewer logs on and searches through the website

So How Should I Use This In My Classroom?
*At the Elementary Level
While Elementary Students are not necessarily ready to start writing research papers, Social Bookmarking allows the teacher to type in a topic and view the website provided prior to a group project in the computer lab. It allows the teacher to be a filter and fully view the websites before the students view them and compile a list of appropriate web pages for the assigned topic. (Example: in the search bar on a social bookmarking website, type in "Math Games" in order to find the most popular math learning games for your targeted age group in the classroom).

*At the Middle and High School Level
Much like at the Elementary Level, this resource can allow the teacher to view and filter out webpages for projects or research papers that have invalid information, questionable material, or if they are doing a group project using only a few online resources. Also provides the teacher an outlet to see what the most popular education websites are being bookmarked and used by other teachers around the country.

*Project and Use Ideas

• In a computer lab, Social Bookmarking is a great way to find tutorials on many software programs and developing technologies used in the classroom
• Assigning specific websites to be used during a project
• A resource for students who are writing a research paper and need relevant, valid webpages for citations and information
• Finding age appropriate learning games and activities
• A place to share your own personal bookmarks with teachers across the country and world

How Can I Learn More About This in the Future?

Here Is A Really Great Instructional Video

Want To Try It Out?

Didn't Like The First Social Bookmarking Website?

A Rated List Of The Most User Friendly Bookmarking Sites

How Can I Use This To Teach My Students?

Using Social Bookmarking In The Classroom

7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking

How To? In The Classroom

Intergrating Social Bookmarking In The Classroom

50 Easy To Use Social Bookmarking Sites







Resources We Used

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking

http://www.wtvi.com/teks/07_08_articles/socialbookmarking101.html