A5.2: Chapter 6 – Richardson

Deidra Darst
9/12/07

Richardson, W. (2006).  The social web: Learning together.  In J. Barbakow, E. Meidenbauer, J. Ward (Eds.), Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

TAP: 

The topic of this chapter of Richardson’s text is social bookmarking.  It was written to inform and encourage educators to include it in their classroom endeavors. 

Claim: 

Richardson acknowledges that searching the Web, with its vast amounts of information, can be a daunting task.  With social bookmarking users can create their own bookmarks and delve into others’ resources as well.  Social bookmarking makes finding, categorizing, and connecting information an easier task. 

Evidence:

The Read/Write Web is an evergrowing source of collaboration and social interaction amongst its users (2006).  Users can bookmark their favorite sites in a public domain and others can see those bookmarks.  Different people find and interpret information differently.  By searching through other users’ tags and keywords, a user can find relevant information that would otherwise have been missed through their initial searches. The connections that are made via social bookmarking allow users to find information previously marked as “relevant” by users with similar interests.  This new type of classification is called a “folksonomy.”  With approximately 1 billion Internet users today, virtual information is classified in new and unique ways.  Richardson believes that social bookmarking could lead to class assignments being completed more thoroughly.  By making research a collaborative effort students learn from one another’s efforts.  One person does not have to find all of the useful information that is available online.  This person can access classmates’ social bookmarks, but the connections do not end here.  Anyone whose bookmarks contain tags or keywords similar to the user’s interest can be accessed as well.  Social bookmarking users have “an army” (2006) constantly finding relevant information for them. 

Connections: 
text-to-self:  Social bookmarking seems to be a technology that could benefit this CD 315.  As we begin research on our topics, I could use social bookmarking to share my successful finds with my classmates.  I know that some of my classmaes share the same topics, so they could definitely benefit from others’ finds.  However, I feel that social bookmarking could get a little hectic and overwhelming.  I am sure that I will be required to use some type of social bookmarking, so maybe my apprehensions will be dismissed upon my using it. 
 

text-to-text:  This article is similar to the EduCause document concerning social bookmarking.  Both texts provide basic information concerning social bookmarking:  what it is, how it works and what benefits it can provide to educators and students.  Richardson takes his explanation a step further to provide directions for joining a social bookmarking site.  This chapter, as well as other assigned readings for CD 315, has highlighted these new technologies abilities to connect users to information.  It is vital for Internet users to know how and where to find relevant information on an as-needed basis.  Richardson writes that social bookmarking connects to RSS feeds (which I wrote about last week).  RSS feeds connect users to newly written information, and social bookmarking connects users to what other users are reading (2006). 
 

text-to-world: Social bookmarking can be a great connecting-tool for the professional world.  A group of professional colleagues who collaborate on projects and work-related assignments can use social bookmarking to learn from one anothers’ research efforts.  Professional endeavors can be completed more thoroughly when several people make contributions to the information-collection process.