Thing 12: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

There have been times that I've bookmarked sights on a computer at home and then the computer gets a virus, crashes, and all of the information is lost. Other times, I've bookmarked something on my school's computer and then need it when I'm trying to plan a lesson from home. I no longer have to worry about these things happening because of Social Bookmarking sights like Diigo and Delicious. I can now bookmark all of my resources in one place and even organize them by topic by tagging them. The benefits of tagging are that visitors can search for a topic very easily. For example, if they are writing a state report on Arkansas, they can simply do a search for any resources related to Arkansas and everything with that tag will appear for them. Another benefit is that users can make connections with others that have similar interests. For example, if I am a collector of antiques and I do a search, I might come across someone who is an antique dealer that has quite a bit of expertise, and who can help me date my collection. A disadvantage to tagging is someone who does not tag a resource thoroughly enough. As a result, someone who could use that resource might not be able to find it because their search term was not part of the original tagger's tag. Additionally, one person may find a resource to be excellent, however, another may night find it that beneficial. The person doing the search may end up with a lot of mediocre resources and have to take the time to weed through them.