Using Web 2.0 applications in the classroom: #2 Social Bookmarking to organize and share resources

What is social bookmarking?
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata, typically in the form of tags that collectively and/or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, "the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content".
(definition of social bookmarking by Wikipedia)

To get a better idea about what social bookmarking is and how it is advantageous, watch this short video from the Common Craft Show.



Getting started with social bookmarking using Diigo


Diigo is a social bookmarking service established in 2006. It's late arrival on the web compared to other social bookmarking services like Delicious (2003) means it has a smaller user base, but has learnt from the inadequacies of earlier services and thereby provides other features which other social bookmarking services do not - including special educator accounts that allow teachers to set up class groups. To get a good overview of what Diigo offers, get me to give you a demo, or just watch this promo video.



The advantages of using Diigo in the classroom are:

1. Bookmarks are stored online and can be accessed from any computer.
2. Teachers can share links with students (no more writing long URLs on the board) and students can share links with each other.
3. Bookmarks are categorised and searchable for simple retrieval later on.
4. Important parts of pages can be highlighted to make located specific information easily retrievable later.
5. Sticky notes can be attached to highlighted sections of pages. This means that with the web and Diigo, a complete replacement for manual (handwritten) note-taking in research is available. Indeed, once a student is familiar with Diigo, the process of note-taking in research becomes much more efficient.
6. Educator accounts are available (upon application) which allows a teacher to have a "teacher's console". This allows a teacher to set up class group. The class group can easily share links and message each other in forums. The teacher can see and monitor all students' bookmarks.
7. If students are submitting work online in the form of blogs, teachers can use the highlighting and sticky notes to offer comments to students about their work.
8. Diigo has "webslides" which allows users to assemble links in a list and then play them back as slides (eg: like MS PowerPoint).

For a more extended demonstration of how to use the highlighting and note-taking feature of Diigo check out this video by a teacher.

Using Web 2.0 applications in the classroom: #1 Introduction

What is Web 2.0?

"Web 2.0" is a catchphrase coined by web gurus at O'Reilly's to describe the revolution in web technologies that arose around the mid-00s. Essentially it is about the arrival of the read/write web - websites that weren't just about disseminating media to the user (eg: portals), but actively required the user to participate in the process of creating the information on those sites (eg: blogs, wikis, social networking, social bookmarking). This has coincided with greater intergration of audio and video media with the web. Therefore a site like YouTube is not just about videos, but is actually a Web 2.0 site in which the users upload and share video with one another.

Here is some further information that will provide an audio-visual introduction to what Web 2.0 is and it's significance.



Social Networking in Plain English (by Lee LeFever, Common Craft Show)


Social Media in Plain English (by Lee LeFever, Common Craft Show)


The Machine is Us/ing Us. (Michael Wesch, Kansas State University)



How is Web 2.0 relevant to education?

For a whole lot of reasons. Here are some:

1. Nearly all students are already using Web 2.0 applications and are frequently more knowledgeable than their teachers. Kids intuitively understand and accept that the Web is an integral part of their lives and can see how it is useful to them. They cannot understand why teachers and the education system in general don't get this point. (Read this article and this article for reports on student usage of the Web.)
2. The workforce of 10 years from now - which we are supposed to be preparing students for - will be even more reliant upon web technologies than today. To deprive students of the information literacy associated with our intellectual disciplines is to inherently disable students. Students may be using the Web, but this does not mean they are using it well or are capable of identifying reliable sources, etc.
3. By not utilizing the resources and services available on the Web we are depriving our classes of some very rich resources and teaching tools - nearly all of which are available for no cost.
4. As we enter the Information Age teaching will move away from being about locating and reproducing scarce information resources to dealing with an overabundance of information resources and identifying the most reliable and useful of these. For this we will be required to teach information literacy skills, including search strategies, identifying reliable sources, producing outputs (eg: essays, slide presentations, graphics, films) utilizing web applications and colloborative online networks.

The necessity of developing information literacy (identification of reliable information, processes, organizing, storing, retrieving and synthesizing in an online environment) brings us to the point where we need to get started. One of the best places to get started is with the next post which introduces social bookmarking in the classroom. Go to

Using Web 2.0 applications in the classroom: #2 Social Bookmarking to organize and share resources