Socialbookmark

** [|Delicious.com] TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH REPORT ** ** Group Members ** : Tara Brummett Brittany Harrell Will Johnston ** Part 1: ** Description of the Technology Like saving your favorite and most visited websites conveniently under a bookmark tab on your personal computer, social bookmarking sites enable users to store and share their bookmarked sites on the Internet. Our report focuses on the benefits of the social bookmarking site Delicious, specifically addressing the technological advantage it offers to teachers. ** GENERAL INFORMATION ** // Delicious.com // is a popular social bookmarking web tool for users to organize, store and share web bookmarks. In addition, Delicious aims to provide an outlet for the discovery of new websites by establishing a community of over 5 million subscribers with more than 150 million tagged websites. The Delicious model was founded in 2003 by Joshua Schachter and purchased by Yahoo! in 2005. The website is now maintained by a team of 30 specialized individuals with a headquarters in Santa Clara, California. The Delicious website offers a free membership with site registration. Registration merely requires a working e-mail address, asks for a first and last name, and requires the creation of a personal username/password. The use of Delicious can be for private or public purposes, although it is most often utilized as a community for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.
 * Social Bookmarking Sites Group Wiki Page **

** OVERVIEW ** Delicious offers countless advantages to educators. This website was designed with the intention of establishing a vast social network of interests, resources, and topics. Educators can especially benefit from Delicious’ use of “tags” within each particular link. Tags are a quick means to categorizing a bookmarked resource. The multitude of similar tags, or topics, provides teachers with endless resources for both professional and personal interests. Teachers can use Delicious for their own professional development by organizing bookmarks related to continuing education, advice forums, and staying up-to-date on pedagogical methods and studies. Delicious allows educators to compile an immense list of valuable teaching resources, accessible from any computer. Delicious’ technological accessibility is particularly useful to teachers because they must navigate between their work and home computers. Similarly, a teacher can access a website more quickly through bookmarks, as opposed to searching for the same website with older, conventional methods. In addition to benefits for the teacher’s professional development, Delicious is a valuable tool to enrich the educational pursuits of students. Teachers can use Delicious as a public domain through which they can afford students with supplemental resources drawing on classroom activities. For example, when studying a topic with students, teachers can utilize Delicious to bookmark websites showing pictures of locations, people, or events related to the text being studied. Through integrating technology in daily classroom activities, students benefit profoundly. The implementation of Delicious in an activity provides students with endless resources which enhance what they had done or discussed in class. ** FEATURES/FUNCTIONS ** || || ** Feature/Function ** || ** Description/Purpose ** || || Networking || This feature enables you to add people you know to your network, enabling you to view their latest bookmarks in one place. A teacher could use the networking tool to connect with students, create bookmarking assignments, and review students effective use of the technology by simply reviewing the created network. Teachers can also network with other teacher’s Delicious accounts and benefit from the resources of their coworkers. || || Bookmarks can be made public or kept private || This feature allows users to monitor the accessibility of bookmarks. For teachers, this could be beneficial when designing a Delicious account that is both personal and public, because it can have items both visible and invisible to impressionable students. || || Accessibility || The accessibility feature of Delicious is outstanding! Instead of the old way of bookmarks being saved to one location, Delicious bookmarks can be accessed from any computer with Internet access. Teachers benefit from this feature by being able to access their bookmarks from the school and their home computers. || **// Brittany Harrell //** ** Part 2: ** Application in an Instructional Activity ** ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION ** ** Overview ** This resource and activity will focus on social bookmarking sites themselves. Since we are doing our unit on social bookmarking sites, we thought we should have one activity that focused on the types and varieties themselves. By using Delicious, I will show the class how to find other websites that are social bookmarking sites, and other sites that do something similar to these sites. I will help show the class that as teachers these resources can be very helpful. If we are knowledgeable about the different options we have to choose from, then it may help us find different kinds of information to use in our classroom.
 * ** Technology: **
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The activity will be that I will create a delicious account for the class. I will use this account to look up other social bookmarking sites. I will then look at those sites and show the class what the other sites are like so they know the different options of social bookmarking sites they have to chose from.
 * Features/Functions**
 * 1) To categorize information on the internet – Sites like delicious help mark certain alike sites for us
 * 2) Finding specific educational links – Social bookmarking sites can allow organization for educational purposes, like finding lesson plans etc
 * 3) For fun! – These sites can be for personal use and can be beneficial to an individual’s interests
 * Activity Overview**

This activity is designed for anyone at least 12 and up. It only requires a basic understanding of the internet and computers. I will not be doing extensive work on the internet, so just a basic understanding should do.
 * Target Audience**

Students will walk away knowing what social bookmarking sites are, how they function, and the different varieties of social bookmarking sites they have to chose from.
 * Goals/Objectives of Activities**


 * Relevant Technology Standard**

I will need a computer that can be linked to a projector so the class can see what I am demonstrating for them.
 * Supplies and Materials**

I will begin by asking the students if they know what social bookmarking sites are. We will have a brief discussion about if anyone knows what they are. Then I will explain, in detail, how social bookmarking sites help us catorgize and store favorite websites. How they can lead us to other sites that are similar to ones we enjoy.
 * Activity Description and Sequence**

I will then use a computer to log into a delicious account. Through this delicious account I will demonstrate how to organize information and similar sites. I will chose the category of social bookmarking sites to do this. That way the students will be able to see what a social bookmarking site is and also the other types there are to chose from.

I will close with a brief description of these sites can be used to find lesson plans online too, that way it can be of use to us as teachers. I will then hand out a sheet of paper and ask the students to list some of their favorite kind of websites and write a few short sentences to say how they would use a social bookmarking site for personal and professional use.

At the end of the lesson I will ask the students to write a few short paragraphs about how they would use social bookmarking sites personally and professionally. During that time I will go around the class and ask if anyone is having any trouble understanding what is going on and if they need my help. // Tara Brummett // **Part 2 Continued:** Application in an Instructional Activity ** Activity Description **
 * Assessment**

This activity will focus on using a social bookmarking site (most likely delicious) to supplement a real in-class lesson. Our activity consists of creating a social bookmarking page on delicious that will be accessible to all students in a given class, and on that page we will have links to resources to supplement the in class activity. For our purposes here we will suppose that the in class activity is reading the novel __To Kill a Mockingbird__ by Harper Lee. 1.  To provide students with an easy was to find resources that are related to a given task 2.  To help students understand the utility of social bookmarking 3.  To integrate technology into a lesson plan in the hope that it sparks interest in the class This activity is intended for a 9th or 10th grade literature class. It does not require computer skills above that of your average high school student, especially considering how tech savvy today’s students already are. Students will gain an understanding of a practical application of social bookmarking while gaining a deeper understanding of a piece of American literature. This is the only stumbling block for this activity. My intention was to have the students use the custom made delicious page from home, requiring every student to have access to the internet at home. Given the ubiquitous nature of the internet today this does not seem to be asking too much, but it remains to be seen if all students will have access to computers outside of school. I will begin by showing students how to log in to the custom created delicious page (username = //Mr_Johnstons_Class// Password = //Mockingbird//). I will then assign chapters of the book to be read before our next meeting, followed by the links that they are to examine after reading. These links could be on civil rights or to a page that gives a description of the time period that the novel takes place. I could link quizzes to the delicious page to see if students are actually reading. Will Johnston
 * Overview **
 * Features/Functions **
 * Target Audience **
 * Goals/ Objectives of Activity **
 * Relevant Technology Standard **
 * Supplies and Materials **
 * Activity Descriptions and Sequence **
 * Assessment **

Part 2: Activity 3 Application in an Instructional Activity Overview: This activity is intended to briefly review the benefits of Social Bookmarking sites for educator's. This activity requires students to relate the benefits of sites like Delicious.com specifically for teacher's professional, curricular, and classroom development.

Target Audience: College students/Future educators

Materials: - Sample Delicious account - Bookmarked websites (accessible through the Delicious account)

Preparation: Prior to the activity, the instructor must prepare a Delicious account through which he/she can discuss the benefits of this type of technology for educators. The account should bookmark the following types of websites: - Professional development: teacher enrichment courses, graduate program sites/links - Community Building: links to the sites of other teachers, links to other's useful tools and lessons - Classroom tools: links for creative classroom management tips, creative decor - Lesson development: external/additional resources for student enrichment activities

Sequence: Review the resources listed above with future-educators, focusing on the specific features related to them as educators.

Assessment: Ask students to review the benefits of Social Bookmarking sites for teachers. Ask students if they are aware of any additional bookmarks that would be useful to bookmark on this Delicious account.
 * Part 3: ** References

[|****http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf****]
 * "Seven Things..." explains the value of social bookmarking sites for educators. This article is created by EduCase, a non-profit association that advocates for the implementation of technology in the field of education. The article defines the networking tool's capabilities, and lists both benefits and setbacks to utilizing this technology in the classroom. This link is a concise overview to our group's topic as it relates to ourselves as educators.** //-- Brittany Harrell//

A Teacher's //Delicious// Bookmarks [|********http://delicious.com/rubyfire********]
 * This site chronicles ELA teacher Jo McLeay's collection of educational materials he has found on the World Wide Web. Each listing offers a title, brief description, and multiple tags describing its key points. This link exemplifies the usefulness of social bookmarking sites for teachers and how such resources can be passed on to students in fun and exciting ways.** -- //Brittany Harrell

Top 20 Bookmarking sites http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-bookmarking// This site lists the top 20 social bookmarking sites. It will tell you which are most popular and who uses them the most. -Tara Brummett

Instructional videos on Social Bookmarking Sites http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=social+bookmarking+sites&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=gKe3SfeAI-H8tgeKvci9CQ&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title# This link will take you to a list of instructional videos on social bookmarking sites. The videos will help you understand what these sites are and how to use them properly. -Tara Brummett

Using del.icio.us In Education [] A research report on how to implement delicious.com in the classroom with actual examples of how educators use this technology. -Will Johnston

Teacher's Blog about del.icio.us [] A blog by a teacher who uses delicious. Gives tips and real-world examples of using social bookmarking in the classroom as well as some potential pitfalls for using technology while teaching. -Will Johnston