Social Book marking Tools: Recruiting an Information Army

As I continue on this technology journey, I find myself feeling like one of the prisoners from Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" who has only been seeing the reflections on the cave wall and not the whole reality of the world- the Web 2.0 world. I will blame "mommy brain", especially intensified by the twins, for how blind I have been. It honestly feels like I am learning a whole new language and culture, probably because I really am!

This week I focused on exploring Social Bookmarking tools in hopes of finding ways to organize interesting online readings and images relevant to my studies and teaching. I have learned what the "social" part of these tools means and have a clearer understanding of the terms tag and folksonomy (two previously foreign words). I began this process by exploring three tools that I have heard fellow classmates and colleagues talk about a lot: Pinterest, Delicious, and Diigo.

Pinterest reminds me of the Sound of Music's famous song "My Favorite things." It is a visually appealing method of organizing and sharing things on the web that you like (recipes, wedding ideas, decor, fashion finds, lesson plans) by pinning them on a pin board. The way the images are displayed certainly harkens back to magazine clips, photos, recipes pinned to a good old-fashioned pin board above a desk, giving this Web 2.0 tool a nostalgic feel. I also like that the Pin Etiquette section requires that you source content, preferably with links back to original source.

You sign up by requesting an invite to Pinterest and being placed on a wait list. I waited eagerly for my email invitation which then asked me to sign up linking to Facebook or Twitter, as another means of sharing what I like. The site then asked me to select from a list of topics that interested me, such as Art, so Pinterest could recommend who I should follow. You are able to comment on, mark as “like” or “repin” what you see on other people's boards. 

As an art teacher, Art Room inspiration by Karly Shelton was what I had in mind when I first began exploring this site. I needed a place to file all the art ideas I find on the web such as lesson plans, images, you tube videos, articles; as I often come across great art resources, use them, then forget where I found them in the first place. So I created my own art pin board called Art to Remember. After pinning only one resource, I was notified via email that someone had re-pinned it. This felt great! I could extend this idea and create a pin board for each of the art units that I teach. Students could also create pin boards as image-development banks. I also created a Favorite Reads pinboard.

Pinterest's mission points to the benefit of using such tools. “Our goal is to connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting. We think that a favorite book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people. With millions of new pins added every week, Pinterest is connecting people all over the world based on shared tastes and interests.” Here is an article from Edudemic on how libraries are implementing Pinterest and a screencast on using Pinterest in the classroom:


Will Richardson in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tool for Classrooms speaks a lot about the pros of the social element of book marking tools which take "...all of the entries that are tagged the same way and connects them, and connects all of the people who tagged them in the first place" (Richardson, 2010, p.89). This dramatic shift in the Read/Write web allows for a community or army of researchers to develop. Through the use of tags, or personal descriptors of the information, a folksonomy develops, that unlike the more traditional taxonomy method of organizing information, allows the "...added potential of seeing how others might interpret or use resources..." (Richardson, 2010, p.91); potentially connecting one to more useful resources. This is one of the reasons Richardson speaks highly of Delicious and Diigo, both sites that allow for user-centered organization through tagging.

Similar to Pinterest, Delicious is set up to help you search for, store, and share online resources. It does not require an email to register, making it "extremely easy to use with students" (Richardson, 2010, p.98). Instead of creating Boards you create Stacks. Visually the site consists of two columns of information which show the front page and intro text of the web link. You can browse other people's stacks by category such education, entertainment, food, news and politics, staff picks or by topic such as Technology in Education, Valentine’s day activities for preschoolers, or Global Citizenship Education. You can also follow stacks, share stacks, or create a response. And of course, you can create your own stacks. Delicious provides RSS feed for all their tags with simple URLs. Personally, I preferred Pinterest's visual appeal and found it easier to use, but see the value in the capabilities that tagging in Delicious creates.

Diigo was the most impressive tool I encountered in terms of its potential to revolutionize the way I read online. When I began my TL studies, after not being a student at UBC for 10 years, I still printed and highlighted articles manually. I then began reading on my computer, while still taking notes by hand. Diigo provides me with the opportunity to read and take notes online through its Digollet feature (pictured below) that you install directly to your Favorites bar, allowing you to highlight, bookmark, annotate, and share what you find.

As you do this, you create your own library in the cloud which you can access from anywhere to view your personal thoughts on what you read, even after original links are taken down. Diigo claims that this type of active reading results in better retention:"With Diigo you literally have a photographic memory.” Organizing by tags creates a type of filing system, but also connects you to others. This personal information management system can be used on all major web browsers, androids, i phones,and i pads. The video tutorials on this site are very helpful and you can apply for an Educator account through Diigo, which allows you many more free features than the basic free plan does.

Richardson suggests many ways to use Diigo in education, including:

• using RSS to describe to people or tags to maximize your information finding potential
• having students subscribe to a the feed of a particular tag so they automatically receive your links and comments on relevant sites
• individualizing instruction by using student names to tag and by inserting links, questions, or suggestions for them
• creating a class archive where all students can contribute relevant links to a topic of study
• tracking student research by using RSS requiring specific tags
• "sharing information with colleagues" (Richardson, 2012, pp.96)
• growing professionally by "just getting into the habit of saving interesting or useful link..." (Richatfdone, 2010, pp.97)
• adding a Diigo feed to a particular web page such as a library website as a way of "...sharing information with a minimum effort" (Richardson, 2010, pp.97)

I plan to continue using both Pinterest and Diigo, exploring how maximize tags in gaining and sharing information.

In their article "OPACs in the Clouds" Paula L. Webb and Muriel D. Nero explore folksonomy tagging webware including LibraryThing, Penn Tags, Encore and Aquabrowser. They believe that "[d]ue to the increase in usage of social applications and other Web 2.0 technologies, librarians must embrace some new innovations that are beneficial to their users and that promote the library's presence as the center for information" (Webb & Nero, 2009, pp.22). The application of interactive interfaces on the traditional catalog can result in "mini-catalogs" created by the user through tags. I am curious if this is happening in school libraries at all.


Questions: Do you know of any school libraries that take use folksonomy tagging webware? 
What social book marking tools do you use with your students or for yourself?

Works Cited:

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts. and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Webb, P. L. and Nero, M. D. (2009) OPACs in the clouds. Computers in Libraries, 29 (9). pp. 18-22.