Although Facebook and Twitter can be resourceful in the English classroom, there are other social networking websites that also offer great contributions. I have conducted a bit of research on social networking, and I am pleasantly surprised with the resources I have found.
Delicious is a website that allows users to bookmark web pages. This resource can be accessed from any computer- the user must simply create a log-in name and the website will save the information under it. To begin browsing web pages, type in a word or phrase in the “search” bar that is reflective of the information you are looking for. The website will read what you type as a “tag.” Others who have found the websites before you will have classified them under tags to help others find them more easily. For example, if I find a website about Scooby Doo, I may tag it with words like: mystery, teenagers, Scrappy, monsters. If you find a website you like in your search, you can “save” it to your bookmarks and create your own tags. You can also share this information with others. This can be helpful within the English classroom, because teachers can easily share information with their students. For example, the teacher can bookmark a homework help website to be available to students at all times. The teacher can make the link public on Delicious, and the students can add it to their list. Students can help each other with research, and teachers can collaborate with each other on projects they are working on as a group. These bookmarks help make research a much faster process and bring resources directly to the users in almost no time.
This video offers a much more inclusive description of how to use Delicious:
A similar website, called Diigo, is described thoroughly in the book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, by Will Richardson. Like Delicious, Diigo allows users to bookmark the webpages they wish to hold on to. Additionally, it retains a copy of the page. If the creator of the website you are trying to save happens to close it down, you will always have access to the copy you saved. This tool is very resourceful, since information is constantly being added and ripped off of the internet. Richardson argues that this resource can be beneficial to the classroom for many reasons. Firstly, teachers are able to share information with students by inviting them to a group. This can be done on an either individual or larger basis. Richardson writes, “..every time you run across something you think Meredith might be interested in reading, you simply add the tag “Meredith” to it and her feed will automatically update…You could insert individualized questions or other links or suggestions for follow up. In this way, you can start to use Diigo as a powerful tool for individualized instruction” (95). As a future teacher, I am interested in reaching out to my students on an individual basis, and this website could assist me in doing so. I want students to know that I recognize their interests and encourage them to delve into the information available.
Mabry Middle, a school located in Marietta, also offers some resources that relate to the concept of social networking. While exploring the school website, I came across a series of short video clips that had been created for the school’s film festival. I was impressed by the level of technology used by the students. I am currently in a college-level technology course, and I am unsure of how they produced some of the effects in the videos. They used pictures, text, music, sound, and video recordings. Some of the clips were documentaries and even included interviews. Each film conveyed an important message, and many of them displayed opposing opinions on the subjects. For example, one of the films showed different perspectives of who Americans think they are as opposed to what the rest of the world thinks. Posting videos like these can be considered a form of networking, because it connects people from different locations to each other. Students in New York can watch the videos made by students in Georgia. We could learn from each other by posting the information we know online.
