Web 2.0 Tools: High impact on Learning, Zero impact on budgets

Are you wanting to show your administrators how technology can improve learning environments? Then have them watch this short video. The tools shown here will have a positive impact on student learning and a zero impact on the school budget.

Web 2.0 Tools: SocialBookmarking-Your personally library for the whole world to read.

User created screen shot. Create on 2009 December 1.

My del.icio.us username is http://delicious.com/m1mccurdy

Julie-Ann Amos’ article, “Top 10 social bookmarking tools for educators”, lists 10 tools that educators can use for social bookmarking. “Social bookmarking is a highly useful tool for educators since it allows specific categorization of websites for easy access and sharing.” (Amos, 2009). I found the idea of a bookmarking tool such as Scuttle “a specialized social bookmarking program that can be run right on a school’s server [where] data is held in the server and not through a third party site, giving schools maximum control over content” (Amos, 2009) would be a great asset for a teacher to propose to administrators who are concerned with Internet safety.

Brian Alexander’s article, “Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning?” describes a number of Web 2.0 tools. His discussion of the social bookmarking tool “del.icio.us” highlights its implementation of tags. “The social bookmarking innovator del.icio.us automatically reminds users of previously deployed tags, suggests some tags, and notes tags used by others” (Alexander, 2009). Tags are a great way of focusing specifically on those areas that you want to find. They save valuable time by keeping users from searching through unrelated sites.

Lorrie Jackson’s article, “Sites to see:
Social bookmarking”, shows a clear benefit to using a social bookmarking site over a browser with saved bookmarks. “Instead of individually saving the site in a variety of folders, you just type a few keywords called tags (Langston Hughes, alliteration, Black History, metaphor, rubric, and so on.), and your sites are organized automatically with sites saved by other users, using those same keywords” (Jackson, 2009).

References

Alexander, B. (2006, March/April). Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? EDUCAUSE Review, 41(2), 32-44. Retrieved December 1, 2009 from http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/2C9EFFFC-00B4-46E9-9CE5-32D63A0FE9B5/0/UNBOUND_02_02_Web2.pdf

Amos, Julie-Ann (2009, August 5). Top 10 social bookmarking tools for educators. Philhosting.net. Retrieved December 1, 2009, from http://www.philhosting.net/articles/top-10-social-bookmarking-tools-for-educators.html

Jackson, L. (2009). Sites to see:
Social bookmarking. Education World. Retrieved December 1, 2009, from http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/sites/sites080.shtml