(a guide for Teacher Librarianship)

All I really need to know about how to blog and what to post and how to build knowledge, I learned in EDES 545. Collective wisdom is not constructed alone, but there on the blackboard of WebCT.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything

• Play podcasts

• Filter less.

• Rethink what you’re doing in your school library right now.
  

• Build a learning community that meets the needs of your learners.

• Don’t post pictures without permission.

• Say you’re sorry when you delete somebody’s wiki comments.

• Respect intellectual property and privacy
  

• Update.

• Asselin and Valenza are good for you.

• Create a balanced plan – read some and question some and gather info and analyze and synthesize and create and share and connect every day some.

• Take a break from the online world every afternoon.

• When you go out on the web, watch out for inequity, and bridge that digital divide.

• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little videoclip on YouTube: your video goes up and the world downloads it and nobody really knows how it embeds, but it’s just like that.

• Web 2.0 applications like blogs and wikis and voicethreads – they’re all social. So are we.

• And then remember the post you accidentally deleted and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – SAVE.

Everything you need to know is online somewhere. AASL’s standards for the 21st-century learner and ISTE’s NETS for students and teachers, and Ribble’s nine elements of digital citizenship. Asselin’s and Doiron’s technology and critical literacies, and ethics and social responsibility.

Take any one of those new literacies and transform your practice for 21st century learners and apply it to your school life or your library or division or your department of education and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – practiced Asselin and Valenza 24/7, when logged on to our laptops to learn and collaborate with each other. Or if all districts had as a basic policy to put teacher librarians back in all our schools to build and sustain a culture of inquiry.

And it is still true, no matter how savvy a digital native or immigrant you are, when you go out on the Web, it is best to hold virtual hands with a teacher librarian and stick together.

[With respect to the original "All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum]

The past three months have been enlightening, energizing, and challenging. At times, they have also been overwhelming, frustrating and discouraging. There has been much to learn and there will be even more to revisit now that the course has come to an end. In many ways, we have had the Web 2.0 tour, now it’s time to share our learning and really put our new skills into practice in our schools.

Key learnings of EDES 501

• Learning to learn… Students, both young and old, now need to be able to teach themselves. David Warlick uses the term “learning literacy” to describe what teachers really should be teaching in this new century… learning how to learn. As a course, EDES 501 is what I would call a value-added learning experience. Not only do you study about Web 2.0 tools, but the actual learning takes place from within the Web 2.0 environment itself. As a result, I have become a participant in this new culture, rather than an observer who simply reports her findings. In learning a new tool or application each week, we have also been putting our new knowledge into practice, to produce content that demonstrates our learning.

• Read/Reflect/Write/Participate Web… the new knowledge that I am a reader, a writer, a collaborator, an editor and a publisher for a global audience. In this “society of authorship” (Rushkoff), everyone has “the ability to contribute ideas and experiences to the larger body of knowledge that is the Internet” (Richardson, p.4). I approach my work with a new mindset because I know that others may be viewing and commenting on what I create.
  

• 21st century learners.. learn differently than I did when I was their age. Today’s learners are “digital natives” and depend on technology to keep them in touch with friends and to provide them with access to the information they need “on demand.” As these learners have different notions of intellectual property and copyright than the previous generation, it will be critical that they develop effective information skills in evaluating resources for authenticity and relevance
  

• New literacies… the emergence of new literacies gives renewed importance to the school library program. With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, educators are realizing that students can be literate in many different ways. As the world becomes more global, we are recognizing alternative ways to communicate our thoughts. By acknowledging the validity of these new literacies, teacher-librarians can use Web 2.0 applications to appeal to different learning styles and empower students to become more engaged in their own learning.

• New cool tools… Web 2.0 tools provide equity, inspire creativity and promote collegiality. A great advantage to using these new tools is that it becomes increasingly difficult for students to plagiarize. My favorite Web 2.0 tools are the highly visual apps such as Flickr (in partnership with Picnik and Big Huge Labs) and VoiceThread.

• The gurus… Richardson, Warlick, Valenza, Johnson, Davis and de Groot. Throughout the course, it has been especially interesting to get to know those who are breaking new ground in the Web 2.0 environment. When I read through professional journals or preview upcoming conferences, I have a new interest in the names of authors and speakers I come across. Asking an expert for their opinion no longer seems unrealistic, as there are so many ways to connect and directly interact with a Web 2.0 guru.
  

• Nings… I found my alternative to Facebook and My Space. Nings are my thing and can provide me with a professional social network of colleagues that can help support my professional learning needs. Through the TeacherLibrarianNetwork, I will be able to keep up with my contacts locally, nationally and even internationally.

• Trailfires… Using Trailfires to scaffold learning is a new strategy that I think will translate well into my own teaching practice. These guided routes became an integral part of our learning each week.

• Teacher librarian as change agents… Teacher-librarians have the potential to provide leadership in navigating the Web 2.0 environment in our schools. The school library program is the perfect vehicle for teaching students how to become critical consumers of information in an online culture where everyone is a contributor.
  

• The generosity of reciprocity (paying tribute to my EDES 501 classmates)… Perhaps the most important learning that I will take away from the course is the power of the social network… especially one that you nurture from the ground up. The collaborative learning environment that we have built around our family of EDES bloggers is information rich and steeped in creativity. It is also a supportive and caring environment that shares successes and rallies to meet your needs. Here are a few of my favorite learning highlights generated from working in collaboration with my classmates:
  • a custom bank of resources, web sites, tips and ideas collected by a team of superb researchers
  • just-in-time learning and instructional support
    
  • give-and-take of communal sharing
  • hyperlinks that add a new dimension “to read through” to other sources
    
  • clever title posts set the stage for blog content
    
  • engaging blog formats (top 10 lists, videos, countdowns, abecedaries, Talkr)
  • using photographs and other  visuals to spark inspiration
    
  • the excitement generated when an expert or academic blogger commented on a classmate’s blog posting
  • sharing you Shelfari and social bokmarking sites
    

Challenges of EDES 501

• Time… I don’t want to dwell on time as a challenge or a lowlight of my learning in particular. I only mention it because it is a factor for everyone, not just me. In education, we often hear colleagues lamenting that there isn’t enough time for this or that. Sometimes it may seem that no one is as busy as you are, but the reality is… everyone is busy with family, school and coursework. I have learned that it is always important to be mindful that balancing time does become about me because everyone leads a busy life. As I grow older, I try to think less about time as an inhibitor to learning. I would argue that there is time for the things you need or want to do and it is simply a matter of deciding how you will spend the time you have. Decide how much time you are willing to commit and make the most of the time you have to give a particular activity. Sometimes I feel that I’m not always producing my best work, which can be personally discouraging… but rather it is my best work with the time I have.

• Learning to persevere… From within the vastness of the Web 2.0 landscape, it doesn’t take long for a “digital immigrant” to become overwhelmed. I will admit that there were times when I questioned whether or not this was the course that I needed at this time in my program. Learning to navigate this new environment hasn’t always been easy. Sometimes it was difficult to find what I needed in order to support my learning and other times there was too much material to investigate in only a week. Problem-solving and inquiry skills became my survival tools.
  

• Technology… There have been occasions when the technology has been frustrating. Moving back and forth from home (iMac) and the board office (Dell) poses certain challenges at times. The filter at work places limitations on what I can and cannot access from my laptop. I remember Mark Prensky’s article entitled “Turning on the Lights” where students confessed that whenever they went to school, they had “to power down.” Now that I have all these new tools at the ready, it is discouraging not to be able to use them with students and teachers in our schools… so it’s no longer only students that are being asked “to power down” at school, too.
  

• Wellness… Just a brief comment on the sedentary nature of online learning. In our group discussions we certainly touched on wellness issues such as information overload, but I think I would add prolonged inactivity, eye strain and addictive behaviour as Web 2.0 concerns, as well. Our Literacy with ICT Across the Curriculum document in Manitoba identifies these possible heath issues associated with ICT. In the interim, I’m looking forward to being more active and shedding my EDES weight!
  

Reviewing the process

I came into this course with a very superficial understanding of the Web 2.0 environment, along with a little blogging and wiki experience from within our divisional portal. During the last three months, we have been immersed in the Web 2.0 culture. With a new tool to learn each week, we were challenged to build on our prior knowledge through research and experimentation.

The process has been an authentic exemplar of how new knowledge can be constructed collectively. Our partnerships in learning the course content have allowed us to explore new ideas, network with each other, and be both innovative and creative. It’s a demanding process to work through, but the rewards are invaluable. As we come to the end, I personally feel more confident in my understanding of how I can use these new tools in both my personal learning, and my work with our divisional library staff. I appreciate that the process has required that participants create their own examples of how they might use these new tools. I now have a collection of blogs, wikis, podcasts, social bookmarks and voice threads that I can draw on for teaching and inspiration. In true 21st century style, the process encourages us “to own” and design our own learning by making it “interactive, social and relevant” (Together for learning: transforming school libraies in Ontario).

What’s next?

• In the Short Term
  • My immediate plans include continuing this journey on into January 2009. I have registered for EDES 545 and I look forward to part two in the new year.
    
  • I will continue to blog, but I plan to focus my blogging efforts from within our divisional portal. At this point it is more valuable to be able to connect with my own library colleagues through my blog. I hope to use what I have learned in a context that is authentic for our school library staff division-wide. It’s important to use the tools we have through our portal and use them with a purpose. I hope to not only model blogging for the sake of blogging, but as a tool for professional learning.
  • In collaboration with two other divisional coordinators, we are in the process of negotiating Doug Johnson to speak to all our teacher-librarians in Winnipeg. He has accepted our invitation and now we are looking for a date next fall which is very exciting.
  • Next week I begin co-planning our Manitoba School Library Association SAG conference for October 2009. The theme – New literacies for the 21st century – which couldn’t be more timely!
    

• Over the Long Term
  • Over the long term, I think it will be valuable to look for opportunities to advocate for a loosening of the reins in terms of our divisional filter and proxy server. I believe that time will come as we begin to outgrow the confinement of the portal
  • To empower our school library staff to become leaders and guides in mining the possibilities of the Web 2.0 environment for teaching and learning
    

A final note of gratitude

In closing, I would like to thank Joanne and all my fellow bloggers from EDES 501 for such an enriching and productive learning experience. Despite the collaborative nature of our work as instructional partners, teacher-librarians can also lead a very solitary existence within their schools when it comes to professional learning… so I am especially grateful for the opportunity to discuss these new ideas with all of you and learn from your weekly blog postings. The resources we have discovered and shared are a more comprehensive collection than anything we might have assembled on our own… and there you have it… the power of the social network, working in collaboration.

An important part of my current teaching assignment is to plan professional development experiences for our school library staff – both library assistants and teacher-librarians. Over the past year and a half, I have come to understand how much our school library staff values the opportunity to network together, share common experiences and learn from each other. The Web 2.0 culture is precisely the new learning that I need to foster among our school library community. I know that they are ready to embrace what lies ahead. It is certainly a very exciting time to be working in school libraries.

When I registered for this course, I wanted to increase my understanding of the Web 2.0 environment and develop confidence in using a few new tools… but there was so much more than I initially imagined. It has been truly inspiring to have worked with each of you and I thank you for sharing the workload and maintaining such a high level of excellence.

With sincere thanks,

katkin

For the first time in this course, I think I have finally been able to explain a Web 2.0 tool that I am studying to my mother. At 86 years of age, she was a child of radio, so she does have some frame of reference when it comes to understanding the popularity of podcasting today. The “Golden Age of Broadcasting” is generally considered to span from the mid 1920s through until the early 1950s. For many of our parents and grandparents, radio programming was the main form of family entertainment growing up. It’s easy to picture a Norman Rockwell-esque painting illustrating the family gathered around the radio, listening to their favorite programs.

Programming on the radio offered something for everyone… news, drama, adventure, serials, comedy, music and children’s shows. Radio entertainment also had a great influence on the listening public. Perhaps there is no better example of how much radio could sway listeners into action than the 1938 broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” (narrated by Orson Welles) that caused thousands of people to call the police and to flee from their homes in fear of an invasion by aliens. Today, podcasting may remind us of the oldtime radio programming, but it also gives new meaning to providing both information and entertainment on demand.

What is a podcast?

Podcasting refers to a web-based broadcast that allows users to record audio (or video) content via the Internet. The term podcast is formed from the words iPod and broadcast, and is also sometimes referred to as “audio blogging.” The podcast format is useful for sharing your thoughts on a new book or discovery, relating an experience such as a trip, communicating news to others, conducting interviews, or reviewing curricular content (Podcasting for teachers & students). Content from a podcast can be easily downloaded to a computer or a portable listening device or you can subscribe to a podcast and have new episodes sent directly to you.

Broadcasting versus Podcasting

The Common Craft video entitled Podcasting in Plain English gives a neat and tidy summary of how a podcast differs from traditional broadcasting:

• requires minimal equipment (a computer, a microphone and a connection to the web
• no recording studio necessary, anyone can create a podcast and broadcast their content to the world
• no longer matters if you miss a program broadcast online because you can subscribe to podcasts and listen to them anytime and anywhere you choose. A podcatcher allows you to “capture” a program and listen to it as often as you like
• use RSS feeds to subscribe to podcasts that you may be interested in listening to at a later date. RSS also enables new content to be delivered directly to you, just as soon as it becomes available.
• download your favorite podcasts and take them with you. Portable devices like iPods and mp3 players allow you to listen to your podcasts wherever you are, not just from your home computer

Podcasting as digital storytelling

As a form of digital storytelling, podcasting requires students to become better writers and editors of their content. In her article “Sound off! The possibilities of podcasting,” Anne-Marie Gordon notes that “the writing process can be an integral part of podcasting” and that “creating a script can actually take more time than recording it.” By the time students “write a script, practise reading it, and perform it, they have actually had three chances to learn the information they’re presenting.”

In the classroom: Kid podcasts of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! uses this Newbery award winning book as the framework for a set of class monologues. Each student has the opportunity to personalize one of the characters in the book and bring them to life in their podcast. This is a great use of podcasting and an instructional strategy that could be applied to other genres such as non-fiction texts, plays or poetry.

Just one more book is a podcast where the hosts discuss children’s books from “their favorite coffee shop.” One of my favorite features on this site is the collection of informal interviews with well known authors and illustrators. What a treat to hear their voices and feel like you are right in the room listening to them speak. Students could study these podcasts in preparation for creating their own booktalks online. A podcast can provide students with a more authentic learning experience by broadcasting student booktalks and book reviews to a much wider audience.

There are many excellent examples of how podcasting and storytelling can be used together not only for teaching and learning, but entertainment as well. Storynory provides a collection of approximately 180 high-quality, audio stories that can be downloaded for classroom or home use. Of course, these stories can also be downloaded on to an iPod or mp3 player, giving children hours of storytelling fun whenever and wherever they want to hear a story. The technique of Natasha, the narrator, is definitely worth studying if students and teachers are looking for their own recording tips from an exemplary role-model.

Implications for Teaching and Learning

In terms of using podcasting for teaching and learning, there are really two areas of use to consider: podcasts as a presentation tool to express or share your own understandings, and podcasts as a reference source that you access to learn information on a topic.

In her article “Sound off! The possibilities of podcasting,” Anne-Marie Gordon calls podcasts “a fun and effective way to reach and engage wider audiences.” A great instructional advantage to using podcasts in the classroom is that teachers can demonstrate a concept or read a story as a podcast, and post it for viewing by children and parents in their class. Students can have access to information they need, well outside school hours and parents can hear what their children are doing in class.

Podcasting is already being used in universities so that students can download a professor’s lecture in preparation for writing a term paper or as a review before a test. Podcasting can be a powerful tool in learning a second language or studying music. Solomon and Schrum state that “the ability to hear these items as often as one wishes puts the learner in control of the learning.” For students with special needs, podcasting gives them increases access to content and opportunities to re-play information as often as required

In her list of “Best sites for educational podcasts,” Joanne Troutner views podcasts “as yet another reference source” that teacher-librarians can promote for use with both students and teachers. There are a wealth of podcasts available online and unlike many traditional resources, they are free to use, anywhere and anytime. One of my favorite podcast finds is Radio Willow Web at Willowdale Elementary School in Omaha, Nebraska. Even students, as early as Grade 1, prove that it is possible for very young children to share their new understandings in a very polished and professional manner.

In addition to accessing student-created content, teacher-librarians can also subscribe to podcasts that support curricular content. For example, National Geographic offers a variety of free podcasts that are useful to students and teachers. Teacher-librarians can create an electronic collection of podcasts and include them as resources on webquests, pathfinders and bibliographies. Since anyone can produce a podcast and share its content on the Internet, students and teachers will also need to be able to evaluate the quality of these programs effectively, just as they would for any other online resource they might use.

In their article, “Podcasting in the school library, part 1: integrating podcasts and vodcasts into teaching and learning,” authors Annette Lamb and Larry Johnson observe that “in addition to motivating learners, podcasts are a way to convey ideas and emotions that are difficult to express in a text format.” This is good news for our auditory learners because, as a communication tool, podcasts give students another opportunity to have their voices heard or demonstrate their understanding of curriculum content. Early years students will also find it easier to explain a concept in a podcast, rather than write about it at length.

In the podcast Women of Web 2.0 (#65), Joyce Valenza comments that although our students may seem proficient in using Web 2.0 applications such as podcasting, we may have been premature in granting them “guru status” in using these new tools. I would agree that student use of Web 2.0 tools does not necessarily translate into “applying skills to real-life needs.” Students will still require guidance and “explicit teaching,” especially in the area of content creation. Joyce Valenza also tells us that teacher-librarians need to be educating students as both “content creators” and “users of content.” Planning a quality podcast takes time. In Part 2 of “Podcasting in the school library,” Annette Lamb and Larry Johnson outline how students can create more powerful podcasts by identifying their audience, working in teams, using their voices effectively and rehearsing the performance. In addition to preparing the content for a podcast, students also need to learn recording skills that include careful enunciation, speech delivery and breathing techniques. It’s not difficult for students to make a podcast, but it is a challenge to create one that is both powerful in impact and well-produced technically.

Implications for Professional Development

According to Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum in Web 2.0: new tools, new schools, “schools are starting to make professional development training sessions, lectures and ideas available through podcasts, which leads to individualized professional development on demand” (p.113). In our school division, I am already seeing professional development being delivered to teaching staff in this way, particularly in the area on ICT. These podcasts are available in our portal and can be accessed by our teaching staff at any time of the day. I would agree that we will probably continue to see the delivery of professional development via podcasting become even more popular because of the convenience of being able to access PD information on your own schedule and being able to revisit the content as often as you like.

In regards to the school library, a colleague of mine is embarking on a new podcasting project with the teacher-librarians in her school division. It sounds like a very interesting project that will invite teacher-librarians from different schools to discuss a variety of library related topics in a series of podcasts. The podcasts will be archived on their divisional website and made available for staff for professional development purposes. I think these podcasts will also be an excellent source of advocacy for school library programs in their division and continue to promote the role of the teacher-librarian as an instructional partner. It would also be worthwhile to create podcasts where teacher-librarians and classroom teachers could discuss ideas for collaboration that support student learning.

‘Twas the night before Thanksgiving

In “Sowing the seeds for a more creative society,” Mitchel Resnick discusses how “new technologies help students navigate the creative thinking spiral” (p.18). I agree with him when he says that “knowledge alone is not enough.” In order to be successful in this new Web 2.0 environment, it is becoming increasingly more important to “imagine” and “think and act creatively.” Podcasting encourages learners to do just that… imagine what you want to do, create original material and share your ideas with others.

I felt very comfortable using Audacity to create my podcast, but there are many other web tools and services available, with iTunes being one of the most popular options. For my first effort, I chose Audacity not only because it is free to use, but also because it is the program used by students and teachers in our schools to create podcasts. In addition to being a cross-platform software, it also allows you to edit your recording and even add audio effects such as how to fade in a musical intro which I experimented with in my podcast. I found that I was much less anxious to create a podcast which I attribute to the auditory nature of the task. I enjoyed the challenge of using the voice over the visual, to engage the listener and communicate a message.

thanksgivingpodcast

What is social bookmarking?

After watching Lee LeFever’s Social Bookmarking in Plain English video, I learned that I have been managing my favorite web sites “the old way,” using my browser tab. From personal experience, I already knew that bookmaking becomes messy over time and that one’s bookmarks are tied to one computer… but when you regularly work on more than one machine, your disorganized life online is only compounded.

Social bookmarking has evolved from the need for users to be more organized in terms of managing their favorite web sites… but it has really become so much more. On TeacherTube, Lori Burch also refers to social bookmarking as “collaborative” or “shared” bookmarking. Popular online bookmarking services such as del.icio.us, Furl, Diigo, Stumbleupon and ma.gnolia, allow users to organize and store all their bookmarks in one place on the Internet, rather than on their computers. As a result, your favorite bookmarks are accessible from any computer, wherever you are… but perhaps the greatest advantage to using social bookmarking, is the potential to share your bookmarks with other users who have similar interests to your own.

The social implications of sharing your favorites with others through sites like del.icio.us allow you to build “your own community of researchers that gather relevant information for you” (Richardson, p.89). In return, because your bookmarks are public (unless you specify otherwise), your bookmarks can be shared with others. This reciprocity makes social bookmarking truly unique in creating a network of users that supply and borrow content from the community as a whole. Everyone who participates in this “pay-it-forward” kind of online society benefits.

Tags are the key to making strong connections with other users. Every user has the authority to assign their own “tags” to their bookmarks, to organize and categorize their favorite web sites. Users can add as many tags as they like to each bookmark and they can also see how many others have used the same tags. Tagging can actually provide validation to a site that has been bookmarked repeatedly by users as one worth looking at. Eventually, a group of users can use particular tags as keywords to locate specific content… this type of tagging creates what is know as folksonomies. Adding other users to your network allows you to collaborate in another way because you can view and add the tags of colleagues.

Concerns

As with most Web 2.0 tools and services, there are still some concerns about using social bookmarking in our schools, as is evident in the “access denied” dialogue box that pops up on divisional computers. Foremost, is that tagging bookmarks remains a very inexact science. There is no limit as to what you can tag, so you never know where a connection might lead a user, especially if that user is a student. Even the bookmarks labelled as “popular” can be cause for concern because you can’t predict what might come up.

Student access might also tempt some users to add inappropriate web sites as bookmarks and subsequently be able to share them with others in the class and beyond. Social bookmarking could also be misused by those users who deliberately and repeatedly target a web site they wish to promote with popular tags, so that it receives a high ranking and therefore more online exposure.

Implications for teaching and learning

Even though I have only been registered with del.icio.us for less than a week, I am quickly coming to the conclusion that social bookmarking has huge potential for supporting student learning and facilitating professional collaboration among educators. Social bookmarking is perhaps most useful for sharing a collection of resources with a group (7 things you should know about social bookmarking). As the “how-to article” on social bookmarking stated on the Teaching today site, “sharing is what makes social bookmarking so powerful.” In considering that students do not have access to social bookmarking services in our schools (even though they may at home), it is perhaps teachers who can really use this service to the greatest advantage.

Since social bookmarking sites allow users to link to others, it becomes easier to find the best educational sites for classroom use because you can also view what others have found to be useful. This is handy for several reasons… you might otherwise miss quality sites that just aren’t that popular and you might also find a kindred spirit who has similar interests and needs in information collection. As well, teachers collaborating on a project can share bookmarks by grouping them together in a bundle. In our division, we are presently in the process of setting up professional learning networks with teaching staff, and I could easily see social bookmarking becoming a powerful piece in the structure that is established.

Even though our students are still bookmarking their favorites on the computers they use at school, they can still access their bookmarks on different computers because their files are on the divisional network, rather than on a particular computer. This still doesn’t solve the organizational issue of favorites lists from becoming overwhelming and it certainly doesn’t allow students to share their favorite sites with their classmates as easily as it might. I could see that a site like del.icio.us could very useful to students working on group projects, both at school and at home. Since a bookmarking service is able to store a user’s bookmarks safely and securely online, there is also far less opportunity for students to “misplace” the sites they need. This is also great for completing research assignments because “all of your relevant online materials [are found] in one place” (DesRoches, D., 2007). It makes research more collaborative and encourages students to be more critical in bookmarking resources that others will see and maybe use.

In my current assignment, I could envision using del.icio.us to share bookmarks that I think members of our library staff might find valuable. I could network collections of bookmarks with different groups and select the content for teacher-librarians, library technicians and assistant librarians. Members from each group could contribute their own bookmarks, creating a kind of custom database. As Will Richardson explains in his article Taming the Beast: social bookmarking, school divisions (or in my case school library staff), could “decide on a unique tag that everyone can use when they bookmark something of interest.” This allows for a particular group to collaboratively build a specialized online resource for their personal use.

Another part of my job includes providing direct support to schools operating without a teacher-librarian on staff… which means that I’m frequently on the road and it is not unusual for me to be in three or four schools in one day. Being able to access my bookmarks, no matter what computer I use and no matter which school I’m in, would certainly make life easier. As Donna DesRoches states in her article All together now: social bookmarking offers a new way to store and share Web sites, “librarians and teachers can tailor bookmarks to meet a classroom’s curricular and research needs.” Even though I am unable to use my del.icio.us account to do this at work, I should eventually be able to doing something similar in the “my site” area of our divisional portal.

I can see that I probably should have been tapping into the benefits of social bookmarking much sooner. Even though, del.icio.us is restoring some order to my former bookmarking system, I can see that when I registered for the service, I seem to have imported older bookmarks from my former browser into my new account… so I will have a little housecleaning to do in order to streamline my new Web 2.0 environment. So even if I haven’t got everything working perfectly yet, I am hopeful and I can see that for my personal use, the advantages to using social bookmarking far outweigh the negatives.
-katkin