Social Bookmarking and Reflection

After reading the Reiser and Dempsey Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology, it is amazing how far technology has come over the last century. This field can go as far back as the 1920’s. Thinking about the 1920’s is so much different than it actually was. Things were thought about back then, but nobody could utilize their thoughts because the resources were not available. When you think about a definition for the aspects mentioned by Reiser and Dempsey (analysis, design, performance, development, implementation, evaluation, and management), it really consists of the workflow for Instructional Technology. There are so many pieces to Instructional Technology that its difficult to pin-point what the most important piece of the puzzle is because, like most machines, all areas need to perform for the highest quality possible. This chapter laid out the most important part of using technology in the classroom, facilitating learning. This will not only assist students, but teachers as well because it’s going to bring on new ideas and increase creativity in the classroom. Ultimately, this article encourages educators to improve learning through technology not only in the classroom, but increased knowledge of the technology for students outside of the classroom.

Working with instructional designers on a daily basis and watching some of the things they use for their work is remarkable. There are so many widgets and new technology coming out over the last few years its amazing they are able to keep up with what is being used and what is “old.” Technology that was relevant in the mid-1990’s are hardly used today because they have been replaced with bigger and better technology. For example, we used to rent a video or game at the local Blockbuster, we now can order the same movie from the comfort of our own homes. Technology is a great tool, but personally I feel it has allowed many to become extremely lazy and so reliant on technology that our interpersonal communication is suffering. As for the classroom, we used to have grade books, paper tests, and group projects. We now have Microsoft Excel, computer programs, and blogs/instant messenger to communicate through non-verbal interaction. Although I feel technology is an amazing tool, my hope is educators do not rely so heavily on technology that it takes communication with one another out of the classroom.

Although I like to think of myself as an above average technology user, I was blown away by social bookmarking. I have bookmarks on my computer both at work and on my personal laptop, but I never really thought about sharing my bookmarks with others. The first thing I did when this assignment popped up was I went straight to Delicious and started adding all my WMU bookmarks I use for work. All in all, I started to put together a plan for people in the workplace to use social bookmarking as a tool for our positions. As a student services coordinator for WMU, I thought if myself and the regional site coordinators shared bookmarks between one another, we could share documents we use to assist students. In addition to sharing with other coordinators, we could also share with students. Often students want to contact me later in the evening when I am no longer in the office. If they went to a site such as delicious and accessed my bookmarks, they could simply type in something such as “Tuition for Online Courses” and simply pull up that link. I believe this would be an excellent tool and it’s something I have started to put together in a presentation to my co-workers.

As for the education side of social bookmarking, I believe it would be an excellent tool for teachers. If a math teacher wanted to learn the best practices on how to teach 2^nd graders math, they could share their thoughts and ideas through social bookmarking. Once you build a solid network, all you would have to do is go and type of keywords. I did this for my passion, basketball. I started adding different sets and plays to my personal bookmarking page. I ended up with a number of different plays and philosophies from coaches throughout the country. Too often I find an idea I really like and I forget to bookmark it, now I can do that by adding a tag and searching for that tag at a later date on delicious. I like how you can create stacks and use those to designate specific topics all in one area.