Social Bookmarking: Why to Do it

Managing Online Resources

Social Bookmarking: Why to Do it

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Twitter: @jonacuso

Post 207

          Though I had been keeping Web sites that I found and considered useful in an email folder, I was fortunately introduced to social bookmarking about 8 years ago when I was taking a course with the University of Oregon (UO). As a way to keep track of all those great Webpages one gets to run into while browsing for information for my language courses and for one’s research papers, our UO instructors asked us to open an account at http://www.delicious.com. Later on, a colleague of mine, Stephen Thergesen, an English teacher based in Denver, Colorado, introduced me to http://www.paper.li, and by means of that site I was able to “fatten” my Delicious account with more useful sites for my teaching, research interests, and life-long learning.

          I must confess that I have somehow neglected my Delicious account because I found, thanks to Stephen Thergesen –again-, another much more dynamic site to keep track of my Internet findings: http://www.scoop.it. But anyhow, those sites are now part of my daily professional life and sharing with my college students. And how have I been using them with my university students? Let me share a couple of ideas with you:

1	Bookmarking in language classes	·         To list webpages for language practice aiming at working with vocabulary or grammar structures ·         To have a list of monolingual dictionaries and thesaurus for writing tasks or reading exercises
2	Bookmarking in content classes	·         To keep track of webpages for research purposes: speeches, papers, WebQuests, etc. ·         To keep record of pages that can be eventually used in one’s teaching practicum

          There are more benefits than challenges in terms of encouraging students to sign up for a bookmarking account. In terms of educational benefits, students will take advantage of social bookmarking by keeping a record of pages they can really profit from. Anything they get to find online and that they consider useful for their future professional practicum and later on practice, it is a plus for all students. It will be up to them to keep on adding more and more sites to their bookmarks to keep themselves current and updated with the new trends in their fields.

          The challenge of keeping a social bookmarking account is not connected to an instructor, but it is more linked to the students. As a language teacher I am much into sharing stuff I find on my regular browsing through the Web and enjoy sparing those sites with my pupils, but it is in the end the learners’ decision to keep on feeding their bookmarks and sharing them with their peers. And the only way to mitigate that is by having students regularly share their findings in a link-sharing section that might be curated by all learners as a wiki.