Social Tools

As our society becomes more internet savvy, people tend to stay online at all times of the day. Instead of having meetings with clients, people will video chat, instead of hanging out with friends, kids will hang out on Facebook. People have always been extremely social, and we still are. The difference between pre-internet years and now is how communication is being exchanged. People are still communicating while they are online, just they are not face to face with anyone. This week we talked about the pros and cons of internet communication, and whether it is hurting our social skills, or helping. Everyone has a different opinion, but I feel that communication is being used by everybody, whether they are online or not. The internet offers so many helpful social tools, like Google Docs. This is a free, web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service offered by Google. People can create documents, and share them with other people who can then edit them. We watched a video in class that described how Google Docs made it easy for an editor of a newspaper to work. Instead of sending copies of the newly edited story, they writer can go onto Google Docs and see the edits that were made, and can even continue editing it. Sharing documents and files has never been so easy. Another great social tool on the internet is social bookmarking. This allows people to organize, store, manage, and search for bookmarks of resources online. The difference between social bookmarking, and regular bookmarking, is that you can share your bookmarks with everybody on a social bookmarking website, and you can make tags about the website, which will make it easy to find in the future. We used the website Delicious, which is a popular social bookmarking site that is very easy to use. Social bookmarking can help many people find the sites they need in half the time. Even though many people are spending too much time on the internet, most of the tools it offers can really benefit people.

Social tools can help a teacher out in so many ways. Teachers love to communicate with other teachers to share activities, lesson plans, and other ideas that can benefit everyone. Teachers who use Google Docs can easily share everything they need to with others, even their own students. If teachers need to give an assignment, they can create it on Google Docs, share it with their class, and the students can finish their assignment and send it back to the teacher, all on one website. Social bookmarking can help teachers a lot to. A video we watched in class showed how a math teacher used social bookmarking to find websites about a certain area of math. Instead of searching the web through thousands of math websites, he could go to his bookmarks, search through the tags for the specific math topic he wants, and his search would be cut down tremendously. When I told my mom about Delicious she was so excited. If you go on her computer you will see hundreds of bookmarked teacher sites, and she never knows how to find the right one she is looking for. Social bookmarking websites can organize all of her websites, and make it easier for her to find the right site. If all teachers knew about this, I am sure they would sign up right away because they are always looking for educational websites that look almost the same, and social bookmarking could differentiate them, and save teachers a lot of time. 


http://www.alltipsandtricks.com/top-10-social-bookmarking-tools-for-educators/

This website explains why social bookmarking can help teachers out. It says it is highly useful for educators since it allows specific categorization of websites for easy access and sharing. It then gives 10 great social bookmarking websites that will help in the classroom and with other educators. Delicious is the second one it gives, and it says that this site is specifically designed for teachers and teaching.