Social Bookmarking

1. Does Social Bookmarking have an application in your classroom? What are some ways it could benefit you and your students? Could it have helped you in the past? Can it help you now as an Albright Student...how? Be specific in answering all questions.
I personally believe that social bookmarking is an excellent addition to the classroom. Because I am leaning towards a younger classroom age I initially thought that it could be used as a way to involve parents or guardians of the students. A site such a Diigo or delicious would allow the parents who can’t make it in during school time to still be a part of their child’s education and still be very hands on. The social bookmarking could include a teacher’s blog of the potential schedule for the upcoming week or the big accomplishments from the week before.
The students would benefit from the fact that their guardian now knows what is going on in the classroom. The students could also benefit from the extra practice the various websites could supply. Sometimes students are afraid to ask for extra practice/help, but if the teacher were to upload links to extra practice then the child could try and work out the problem on their own. The students also know where to find information for their projects and papers. It makes my job of grading easier because I know that the information that they are using is correct.
Also if my students were doing any kind of research on their own I would want them to create an account and create a separate list for the assignment. This way I would have an immediate copy of their sources. I would be able to fact check and check for plagiarism at top speed. It would be a handy tool for the teacher as well as the student in this case.
Social bookmarking would have been amazing in high school! All of my English classes would type out websites on how to format MLA but the links never worked right. This way the entire class could have the resources at their fingertips. I would have been so happy to have the websites already typed out for me. Also I have had my computer crash several times since I bought it (like twice) but it feels like a million times when you lose all of your information. If I would have used a diigo type site before I could have saved all of websites and all of my sources on a diigo list.
Using Diigo now as an Albright student will be helpful. As a psych co-concentrator I am always researching one thing or another so now I can keep all of my files and sites organized. I can also use diigo as a way to sort out different educational resources for myself or for the future for my classroom.