My Adventures in Social Bookmarking

 My title is misleading. Let me tell you why. I didn't really explore more than one social bookmarking site. Technically, according to Wikipedia, sites like Facebook and Twitter are not social bookmarking sites. I thought they were, but they're not. One of the most famous ones that I am aware of is Reddit. Yet, I never was a user of Reddit, so I can't comment much about it. 

Wikipedia's page for "social bookmarking" says the first one was itList in 1996 and that the term "social bookmarking" wasn't coined until 2013 by a social bookmarking site owned by Delicious. Before reading Wikipedia's page, I was thinking Facebook was like social bookmarking because we are able to share websites and videos just like a social bookmarking site. We all know Facebook is so much more than that, but in a generalistic view of social bookmarking, it would make sense that it would fall into that category. Am I wrong?

Anyways, to get back to the social bookmarking site that I actually explored, at least a little, was Diigo. I really wasn't impressed with the design of the platform; it was too busy and lacking impressive visual features. I also didn't like the formatting as I am not a fan of tagging as a way of sorting and keeping track of information. As an educator, I naturally try to figure out how these platforms can be used in the classroom to make my job easier, but also to assist in student learning. The website itself wasn't fascinating or impressive in any way, but I discovered that the Google extension would allow me to manipulate webpages. Not only could I bookmark a page, but I could use the extension to highlight parts in multiple colors and add notes directly onto the page. The notes would minimize when you close them and they could be opened back up when you clicked on them again. There was also a button that would list all of your annotations in one spot in a bulleted format. I can see that coming in handy in the classroom for multiple purposes. Students could practice annotations on short stories, they could publish and critique each other's websites/blogs/articles, and/or complete an online assignment that was designed to utilize online sites, place-markers, annotations, and/or tags. After all of this exploration and reflection, however, I wonder if the Google extension feature is truly categorized as social bookmarking? It's not much like the Diigo website. They seem like two different tools, and yet they are related when it comes to the sharing part. It's something to think about. What do you think? Share in the comments!

I will end this blogpost by saying that even though the "social bookmarking" label is unclear in modern times as to which sites actually can be called such, some things remain clear: people like to save their stuff, they like it to be easy to save their stuff, they like to share their stuff, they like it to be easy to share their stuff, and they like for it to through a source that is reliable and will not be shutting their digital doors any time soon. No one wants to have to transfer their stuff from place to place like baggage. And they don't want to have to spend a lot of time organizing it later. People love easy. My advice to educators who want to use social bookmarking in the classroom: choose a good one and stick with it. Be creative, but don't lose sight of the end game: learning.


Source

Wikipedia contributors. (2024, January 25). Social bookmarking. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 00:18, February 19, 2024, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_bookmarking&oldid=1198872952.

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