Social+Bookmarks

=Social Networking=

Social Networks
A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online [|social networks] for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of [|software]. Most services are primarily web based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as [|chat], [|messaging], [|email], [|video], [|voice chat], [|file sharing], [|blogging], [|discussion groups], and so on. The main types of social networking services are those which contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and recommended systems linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with [|MySpace], and [|Facebook] being the most widely used. (Reference: Wikipedia, downloaded 01/27/08).

Social networks are virtual communities where one networks with others and shares resources.



**Examples**:

 * [|AssistiveTech Ning]
 * [|Listing of Social Networking sites]

**Potential Uses of Social Networks in the Classroom:**

 * Learning Communities
 * Project Based Learning

**Tools to Create Social Networks**

 * Ning = [|http://www.ning.com]
 * Elgg - [|http://www.eduspaces.com]
 * MySpace - [|http://www.myspace.com]
 * Facebook - [|http://www.facebook.com]

Resources
= =
 * [|Social Networking in Plain English]- video (CommonCraft production)

Social Bookmarks
= = Social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a public web site and “tagging” them with keywords. According to Wikipedia... "In a social bookmarking system, users store links to web pages that they find useful. These link lists are either accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis."

Most social bookmarking services (see resources below) allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given "tags", and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them. Many social bookmarking services also have implemented algorithms to draw inferences from the tag keywords that are assigned to resources by examining the clustering of particular keywords, and the relation of keywords to one another. Its increasing popularity and competition have extended the services to offer more than just sharing bookmarks, such as rating, commenting, the ability to import and export, add notes, reviews, email links, automatic notification, feed subscription (see RSS), web annotation, create groups and social networks.

Examples:
[|Kirk Behnke's webpages] [|Delicious] - online social bookmark tool [|Tricia Peters' Delicious site] -- educational links [|Remember the milk] -- web-based organizational tool [|Karen Janowski's webpages] -- Karen's favorites for Ed Tech [|Cite u like] -- a free online service to organize your academic papers [|Backpackit] -- web-based scheduling and organizational tool

References:
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf -- Educause Learning Initiative. May, 2005[|]