Social bookmarking: A tool that I love

Social bookmarking must be one of the simplest implementations of the Social Software movement. Yet since I was introduced to Del.icio.us in November last year it has become a key part of my working life. Not only do I visit it for my own information, but send colleagues there rather than remembering to e-mail them a link.

Companies as large as Sun Microsystems are now recognising this. In the article Social bookmarking: Pushing collaboration to the edge Shamus McGillicuddy writes "Although social bookmarking has enjoyed success on the Web, business adoption of the technology has been slow to take hold, largely due to the fact no vendors have come forward with an enterprise product."

In educational terms the ability to share what you are reading with colleagues in a subject area, or with research colleagues, or with your students, indeed even having your students share theirs with you, makes a much more fluid knowledge transfer than books and papers tend to achieve.

In addition in the academic world CITEULIKE offers the same for academic papers. In all it just astounds me why more of us are not using it to make sure that our students start constructing their own knowledge from the sources we use, rather than spoon-feeding them.