Sunday, April 18, 2010

What is bookmarking and what are the benefits?

My Delicious account is a very important tool for me as a prospective teacher. I believe everyone can benefit from the use of this tool, as my 10 year old son already has one up and running.

Bookmarking (often referred to as social bookmarking)is a way of organising your web addresses. It is similar to 'your favourites' on your desktop but with this type of bookmarking because it is on the internet you will never loose it, never not have it (as long as you have internet access!) and you can continue to tag and share your bookmarks with other people all over the world - especially if you have a specific community of practice. You can even have your students jump onto your site and open up specific pages for homework etc - things they can do in their own time or even fast finishers could find appropriate sites to access work appropriate to what they have been learning about. When students are given the opportunity to make choices about their learning it becomes more student centered and there is more internal drive for improvement to seek out further knowledge.

Although Bookmarking is generally just a tool and not so much a learning device it also has its place in supporting student centered learning. I have witnessed a teacher use his Delicious account as a way of encouraging students to seek out further information in a subject they have a particular interest in. The students log onto the teachers Delicious account, search the tags and then select a site that is appropriate to their current learning. The student knows ahead of time they will not spend hours 'surfing' the net searching for appropriate information about the required subject - the teacher has done the work and selected the best sites available. I see huge potential in reducing wasted computer time and making the most of the possibly limited time available in a computer lab or at home.

Students will love the chance to share, borrow and interact with other people's delicious site in order to either build up their own bank of resources or just to see what other people find useful.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Sally,

    After reading your blog, I to have created a delicious account and found it very useful when not on my own computer with my list of favourties available. I think it was Scot who suggested we give our students a list of websites to use when researching information and what a great way of doing this.

    Thankyou for sharing this bookmarking tool with us.
    Emma

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