I used to use sticky notes for Bookmarks

I used to use sticky notes for bookmarks and I never, ever shared them with anyone. Then I went to the WWW and found out out to mark web site pages electronically as my own favorite and I still never, ever shared them. My favorites were only posted to my personal computer. (Web 1.0)

Now, with Web 2.0, I am not stuck to one computer to find my favorite sites. I can go to Delicious.com from any computer and I can choose to share my knowledge with other people on the web. My favorite aspect of social bookmarking is that I can type in a tag search and find other sites that people have marked as their favorite or most helpful.

I used this feature when I had to do an education assignment for my Literacy and Technology class. I was asked to find 2-3 good web sites and evaluate them. I did not realize how much trouble this would be. So many sites are camouflage for advertising and I did not want to recommend a site that would influence a student's buying power. That is when I thought about social bookmarking. I used the opinions of others to help narrow my search. They had already done the first step for me! I was able to find 3 sites I liked and finish my assignment.

Signing onto Delicious was easy except for re-typing the letters that are altered. I had to do it 5 times and then asked my daughter to do it for me. She had to try 3 times until they were correctly submitted. I am so glad I was "forced" to use this bookmarking and I will use it to filter my search for helpful sites in the future.


A final note: Google is a great tool for finding websites related to a topic. However, social bookmarking sites such as Delicious.com organize the sites into evaluated sites. Most people don't save sites that are not helpful. One drawback is that when a user saves a website to the bookmark, they determine the tag. The tag is used to search the bookmarks. If a tag is not accurate, the page will not come up for a search. You may also get mis-tagged sites that are not relevant. I can imagine some jokester (I can name the exact student) tagging an inappropriate site as "educational". So, remember, choose your tags carefully, keep student bookmarks private and use more than one search term!