Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers shared a presentation this morning.  To read the whole story and learn how to export Firefox bookmarks and reuse them, CLICK HERE

Richard discusses the fact that teachers should switch over to using a Social Bookmarking service.  I totally agree! Social Bookmarking means your Internet website Bookmarks or Favorites are saved in an account on the web.  The advantage is you can access your bookmarks from any computer.  And if you are teaching in a school district that makes you turn in your laptop for re-imaging every summer, this will save you.  I use delicious and as well as Diigo.  They are similar and yet have some different features.

I like delicious because it is quick and easy.  I have “buttons” installed on my browser toolbar in Safari and Firefox.  http://delicious.com/help/bookmarklets

For Firefox you can install the buttons when you create your account or even after the fact.  To do so after the fact:  Firefox Add-0ns https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3615/.

For Safari, you can install when you create your account or as a add-on http://safariaddons.com/en-US/safari/addon/39

Diigo buttons are also available for both as well as some other browsers.  So, what is the difference between delicious and diigo.  Personally, I like delicious for quick on the fly bookmarking.

But I do like Diigo for sharing.  For example, I have all my students create a Diigo account and join the group K-State Pre-Service.  Throughout the week , I bookmark the resources I stumble across and I tag them K-State Pre-Service in Diigo using the toolbar button  (set your alert setting to weekly, the default is immediately).  Then once a week, my students receive an email from me with all the resources from that week.  They save and bookmark whatever is useful to them in their own delicious account.

I belong to about 20+ Diigo groups.  I get those weekly emails from all the groups, usually on Sunday’s and find a ton of useful resources to use and share.  http://groups.diigo.com/user/cyndidannerkuhn

The point is, I never have to worry about where my bookmarks are located. Plus they are organized.  If you want a better explanation of Social Bookmarking, check out Social Bookmarking in Plain English by Common Craft: http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english

Delicious: http://del.icio.us/cyndidannerkuhn

Diigo: http://www.diigo.com/profile/cyndidannerkuhn

By the way, I have my Diigo settings set so they automatically post to my delicious account.  And when I post to Twitter, it automatically posts to both my diigo and delicious. Pretty handy!!