Social bookmarking allows people to share the sites that they have come across and found useful or interesting, a networking way of promoting interaction and collaboration in the classroom. Two popular tools for social bookmarking are Furl and del.icio.us.The main difference between the two, according to Will Richardson, is, "Whereas Furl is about saving content, del.icio.us is all about sharing links in as easy a way as possible." One other recent tool is H20, a bookmarking site designed by the Harvard Law School. Read Ewan McIntosh's comments on "H20: Tagging for Academia", in which he points out its advantages over del.icio.us for classroom purposes.

For a brief introduction into social bookmarking, its uses, and various bookmarking tools, read "Social Bookmarking Tool Comparison" at ConsultantsCommon.Org. For sources specifically on using Furl and del.icio.us, Jim Wenzloff has a guide for using Furl (pdf); beerlerspace has "Us.ef.ul, a beginner's guide to The Next Big Thing" (for del.icio.us); and David Muir's EdCompBlog has a guide to del.icio.us, which also includes the value of using RSS feeds.

RSS feeds are like subscribing to a newspaper: it comes to you. Except with RSS (take your pick: rich site summary or really simple syndication), the content on the blog or other website that you subscribe to comes to you instead of you going to each website.

Why use RSS?

• Subscribe to all of your students' blogs
• Create search feeds for news groups and news (via Google News or Yahoo News)
• Create search feeds for websites and blogs
• Get current information on a topic or issue for class studies and projects,.

How to use RSS?

• Begin with Bloglines, a great online reader. (Pretam Rai has written an excellent how-to guide on "Using Bloglines".)

Also, Will Richardson has a everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-RSS article called "RSS: An extended guide for educators" (pdf). He also has a post on why to use RSS Magic. The main point is this:

And maybe that’s the new strategy, get teachers and students rss-ing first. Give them a framework for understanding how disparate looking pieces of content really aren’t as disconnected as they seem, and that there are new ways to find and collect and archive ideas from any number of previously unknown places. That all this seemingly random creativity is really not so random at all, that it is “loosely joined” in ways that allow us to make it even more relevant and effective in our practice and in our learning.

Getting started with blogs is easy, and there are a variety of free blogging hosts:

• Blogger.com
• Wordpress
• Edublogs
• elgg

Blogger is one of the oldest and easiest to set up and publish on. In just 3 easy steps, you're ready to begin publishing. In using blogs, either for students or for yourself, it's helpful to read other established blogging educators, such as in the blogroll on this blog. And Darren Rowse of Problogger has a good tutorial "Blogging for Beginners."

For a "personal learning landscape," consider elgg. Elgg is a community of learners where one can form "friends" and "communities" with others having similar interests. It provides a blog, RSS feeds, calendar, and file uploading. Its strong point is how it enables people to form communities of friends that you can easily interact with. For a thorough review of elgg, read "Elgg -- A Personal Learning Landscape" in the journal TESL-EJ.