Most of us are familiar with "Favorites" where we save to our personal computer the address of a web site you wish to visit in the future. Social bookmarking is the habit or practice of saving bookmarks to a Web site and "tagging" them with keywords in order to share them with others. Social bookmarks allow you to easily store, organize, tag, search, and share websites with your students. It is a tool to use to distribute reference lists, bibliographies, papers, videos, interactive activities, and multimedia and other resources.
To make a more "student-centered" use of this tool, build a class social bookmarking site. Once you have created student accounts, have students build and maintain the social bookmarking website by generating and classifying subject-specific content.
In our courses, students are asked weekly to contribute a subject-specific resource. Students are asked to find and add current events articles that demonstrate real-world examples of the subject of study. Students are asked to contribute multimedia resources such as video or podcasts to help peers with review for exams or to help peers clarify content.
Resources are continuously added to the site by students, each resource is "tagged" by a special term given to the students by their teacher. So if a teacher was asking the class to contribute resources about the process of photosynthesis, the students add their resource to the class bookmarking site and make sure to tag it with the required word "photosynthesis" in addition to other tags. Students are also required to write a short summary of the resource.
This active learning requires intellectual effort, encourages higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation and provides a means for the learner to assimilate, apply, and retain their learning.
Oh, and it is fun too!! Activity Details Activity 1
Visit a Class Bookmarking site. Notice the resources added, tags and summaries offered. Economics Class Bookmarks History of Mathematics Bookmarks Professional Development Bookmarks Activity 2
Play with "tags" to identify resources you could use in your classroom. How do you find these bookmarks?
Go to Diigo the social bookmarking website.
Over at the top right is a search box
Type in the tag you want to search for such as "math" and hit enter. Any resource tagged with "math" will appear.
Once the results are returned you can refine that search in two ways:
1. Click on "See all items tagged math" and a list of all the tags related to "math" appear. You can click on any of the tags to refine the search and see just resources tagged with both terms.
OR
2. Click on "Search within results" and type another tag in the Search box to see resources that are tagged with both terms.
Activity 3
To build a Class Bookmark site, start by signing up for an account. A tutorial and screencast on setting up an account is attached below.
Please note the tutorial includes directions to set-up an Individual account and to set-up an Educator account so you can then create student accounts. You will not be able to build student accounts today because Diigo must approve Educator accounts so that you can receive the premium service for free! So for now, just sign-up for the Individual account and submit the application for the Educator account if you wish. Your individual account will become a premium account once approved.
Now start adding bookmarks. A tutorial and screencast on adding bookmarks to a Diigo site is attached.
Class Bookmarks
To make a more "student-centered" use of this tool, build a class social bookmarking site. Once you have created student accounts, have students build and maintain the social bookmarking website by generating and classifying subject-specific content.
In our courses, students are asked weekly to contribute a subject-specific resource. Students are asked to find and add current events articles that demonstrate real-world examples of the subject of study. Students are asked to contribute multimedia resources such as video or podcasts to help peers with review for exams or to help peers clarify content.
This active learning requires intellectual effort, encourages higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation and provides a means for the learner to assimilate, apply, and retain their learning.
Oh, and it is fun too!!
Activity 1
Visit a Class Bookmarking site. Notice the resources added, tags and summaries offered.
Economics Class Bookmarks
History of Mathematics Bookmarks
Professional Development Bookmarks
Activity 2
Play with "tags" to identify resources you could use in your classroom. How do you find these bookmarks?
Go to Diigo the social bookmarking website.
Over at the top right is a search box
Type in the tag you want to search for such as "math" and hit enter. Any resource tagged with "math" will appear.
Once the results are returned you can refine that search in two ways:
OR
2. Click on "Search within results" and type another tag in the Search box to see resources that are tagged with both terms.
Activity 3
To build a Class Bookmark site, start by signing up for an account. A tutorial and screencast on setting up an account is attached below.
Please note the tutorial includes directions to set-up an Individual account and to set-up an Educator account so you can then create student accounts. You will not be able to build student accounts today because Diigo must approve Educator accounts so that you can receive the premium service for free! So for now, just sign-up for the Individual account and submit the application for the Educator account if you wish. Your individual account will become a premium account once approved.
Now start adding bookmarks. A tutorial and screencast on adding bookmarks to a Diigo site is attached.
Once finished building you site submit the url to our showcase by click the link Showcase in the menu to the left.
Submit the url of your public Diigo site to our Showcase page in the menu to the left.
Tapping a Pencil by tomsaint11, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Apple by orangeacid, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.