week 3

Social Bookmarking is tagging and cataloging sites for easy retrieval.  As a student I can use Social Bookmarking to create lists of sites that I have used for a particular area of research.  Also, I can search others’ lists for similar sites related to whatever topic I am working on.  In the Educause article “7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking,” it is illustrated that the keywords or tags another user applies to a certain site helps the researcher to direct their focus on more varied paths.  The concept of sharing through Social Bookmarking presents opportunities to more easily and effectively broaden the scope of our online research.  I like the collaborative nature of Social Bookmarking; it takes a lot of the guesswork out of evaluating sites because others have already reviewed them and commented on their quality and relevance.  As a teacher I think I could use Social Bookmarking to help my students identify the kinds of sites that are worthwhile.  In their own use of Social Bookmarking for research they would learn to evaluate the information on a site not only using their own judgment but also the judgments of those that have reviewed the site before them.