The Advantages of Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a great way to get organized and have a convenient way to access all of your favorite web pages and resources. I am very excited to begin using social bookmarking myself. Right now, all of my favorite websites are listed under my "bookmark" tab on my web browser, and to find one that I want to look at I have to scroll down and find it amongst a wide variety of websites. I have a lot of pages listed, so picking one out of this long list is rather time consuming. With social bookmarking, I can tag my websites and organize them in a way that will be easier for me to go to the ones I want. For example, if there is a specific recipe website that I want to look at, I simply click on the tag marked "cooking" and there they are! I don't have to scroll down my long list of websites and finally find the one I am looking for smashed between a page on Amazon that I bookmarked, and a UTube video. Also, if I am on a different computer, I can easily access my bookmarks by simply logging into my del.icio.us account instead of waiting until I get home to be able to see them on my own computer. It's very convenient!
Social bookmarking can also be beneficial in education for students. Through social bookmarking, users can invite other users to browse their websites. If students are doing reports on the same topic, they can bookmark certain web pages pertaining to that topic, and invite their peers to access them too. That way, the students are getting double the information. Although some of the websites might be the same, there is a good chance that students will have at least one website that other students did not find.
Parents can also use social bookmarking to simplify their online lives, but they can also use it to stay in tune with what is going on in their students' lives and how they can stay involved themselves. In my future classroom, I could have a tag that is especially for parent resource pages that could range from information on disabilities, behavioral problems, ways to get their child involved in the community and the school, and future school and community events that they should be aware of.
I think social bookmarking is a great tool to use to share favorite sites and information. It is also a great way to organize your online world. I already cannot wait to clean out my "favorites" section on my bookmark tab and transfer them into my del.icio.us account.