Social Bookmarking

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

Teachers from the Trenches

My students are learning about and beginning to set up their own Social Bookmarking site like del.icio.us or Portaportal, etc. If you have an opinion about social bookmarking or one to share, we would really appreciate taking advantage of your resources.

I have two, a del.icio.us site, that I basically use it for on the fly bookmarking then I move sites to my Portaportal so I can organize them better.
http://del.icio.us/cyndidannerkuhn
http://guest.portaportal.com/cyndidannerkuhn

[Melissa Beyer]

I think Delicious looks amazing and a great tool for what I need it for. I will have to check out portaportal since I have read some many people are using it.

[Nick Perez]

I thought the delcious website was the easiest to navigate once I looked around other sites. I look forward to learning more about it.

[Maureen Brisson]

Hi There
As a resource to use for students (of all ages) I think that Portaportal is excellent. You can organize for students to find information quickly and it serves as a template for them to organize their own resources in a logical format.
Middle and high school students can begin to use this website and then continue to add resources through the grade levels. Perfect for college also and to share with "study groups". Let's hope it stays as a free resource though!

A resource that I found many years ago, that I use for many types of communications between teachers, parents, students, is located at www.eboard.com. It is a post -it site message board that can handle uploads of all types of media. However, it is a subscription site $39.00 a year- use to be free.
But check out the demo and see the variety of uses. Many teachers I work with use it as a classroom or school website.

Maureen

[Mike Diggs]

I will check out the eboard demo it sounds like a useful product for the classroom. Better communication is always a plus between student, parents, and teachers.

[Jill Whitson]

I think most parents these days have access to the internet and with busy schedules it is easier to check online at your convenience than to try to leave work for face to face conference on minor issues. We have the Powerschool program at our school that parents can check on grades, schedules, etc. I think the more forms of communication that we can offer to parents the better the chances that they will take the opportunity to be involved in their childrens educations.

[Ryan Meng]

I am really new to this whole concept so my site is definitely in the infant stages. I chose the Furl social bookmarking service because of the feature which basically saves a screenshot of the page you bookmark for future use. This is very useful to me because many times, I will come across a site and not have time to read the article or to explore a feature. Then, when I do have time to go back and look, the site has changed. In addition, you can still refresh and view fresh content on the site. It seems pretty to navigate as well. We'll see how it goes. I can see myself using this in preparation for my classes as a teacher. Because I like to read the news on the internet so much, I will be able to bookmard certain stories and use them in class discussions and such.

My Furl site:

[Ryan Meng]

Again, my link disappeared...let's try again:

http://www.furl.net/members/rjmeng

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

always a learning process!!

[Vicki Schmidt]

I chose to use Wetpaint. http://vickiwiki.wetpaint.com

After exploring a couple of sites I was just more visually atracted to the wetpaint site. It seemed very user friendly and felt a little like "Wikis for Dummies" which is right up my alley. I have to be honest here--I had to Google the term "wiki" as it was being thrown around a lot here and I didn't have a clue what it reall meant. It's my new favorite term now! I am looking forward to checking my page and seeing what has been added as the semester goes on!

Anyway--I am absolutely floored at the wealth of software and tools that are available on the web! Wow! How incredibly useful it will be to have bookmarks that can be accessed from any computer anywhere! I can't believe how much I have learned in just one week!

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

Please post the URL to the Social Bookmarking site you set yp and are adding resources.

[Deidra Chestnut]

The bookmarking tool I will use will be delicious. I have to be honest, ALL of this is new to me and I am not at all good with technology or computers (what a class for me!!) After reading the information and having my husband put everything in "Deidra terms", I understand what a value social bookmarking really could be. As I said, I have never used anything like this before (but I do read books a lot & use bookmarks in that sense, so that's the way my husband had to explain it to me.) I think it would be exceptionally helpful for teachers in the same school district or even other districts to say hey....this is a site that I like, give it a try.

[Deidra Chestnut]

I forgot to add this. Sorry!! http://del.icio.us/deidrachestnut