07.+Social+Bookmarking

= 07. Social Bookmarking = = = = =

Name of Technology Tool:
Delicious ([|www.delicious.com])

Rationale for Using this Technology Tool:
Social bookmarking with Delicious is a great way to collaborate on a group project, to share resources, and to combine search efforts and results. Because Delicious enables the users to both save and share links, it can be used as part of a collaborative project with ease.



Who will be Involved:
The school librarian can establish the Delicious account and share the username with the students. Students (in this case, sixth graders) will be able to add links, teachers involved can add links, and, of course, the school librarian can add links to the Delicious bookmarks.

Description of Scenario:
Students will use Delicious to save bookmarks that they find for a class project in order to share with the entire class as a whole and with classmates in their specific small groups.

Rationale for Using This Technology Tool In School Libraries:
When people think of research projects in schools, they immediately think of the library and the school librarian. In this project, the school librarian can set up the tech tool and contribute to its use, but can also include students and teachers in order to make it a collaborative tool and in order to make it accessible and useful for all involved. As students search for resources, they will be able to save the links easily as bookmarks in Delicious so that they and their classmates can return to the sites later to complete their research.



Detailed Description of Scenario in School Library Setting:
Sixth graders at Modern Middle School are beginning a unit on the civilizations of the Ancient Americas. The project is interdisciplinary and involves connections between history/social studies, language arts, art, science, library, and technology classes. Each student will be assigned to work in a small group which will focus on one particular civilization: Olmec, Inca, Aztec, or Maya. As the children begin to find online resources, they will use Delicious to save and share links with their classmates. Students will create labels or tags for each bookmark that they add to the class account (or bundle) to enable others to easily search for and access links that match their specific topics of study. For example, many sources will contain information about all of the civilizations and can be given labels that include the names for each civilization; each group will be able to search the class account for their specific civilization both within general and specific sites. Since these are such large topics, students will find resources that meet their particular project topic as well as links that meet the topics of their classmates. In this way, students will be able to share their findings with each other both within their own group and with the entire class and to save the bookmarks that they will want to return to as they complete their research. Instruction in searching techniques and in how to use Delicious can be led by the school librarian. Discussions and lessons can include ways to label (tag) the bookmarks and how to bundle the tags to facilitate searching later. Tags can include a class label as well as a civilization label and specific topic labels. Teachers and library staff can also contribute to the bookmarking project. The librarian can also create a label and corresponding bundle of tags for citation gathering and project planning or other research-project related links.

submitted by Suzanne Mathews