Social bookmarking comes in many flavors.  I still keep my Diigo account mainly because I have a bookmarklet attached to my toolbar. Let’s admit it – Diigo is pretty much just rows of text and you have to remember to tag everything or you will never find it again!

Two new social bookmarking tools are showing up in school library circles as ways to build their PLN’s, and use as a curation tool. Realize what you are looking it – both of these social bookmarking platforms have been developed for the business of marketing products.  Educators are looking at both of these because of the ease of building a website of bookmarks. 

Scoop.it starts out with topic selection and adding keywords to the Scoop.it creation dashboard. With a click, Scoop.it searches the web for articles, blogs, and more that pertain to your search. You have the opportunity to curate – pick your favorites – to add to a glossy looking online magazine. Scoop.it sends by email new recommendations you can scoop to your bookmarked topics.  You can explore Scoop.it by searching for topics that other people have scooped.  In searching for e-books, the unquiet librarian, Buffy Hamilton, has already curated “eBooks, eReaders, and Libraries”. Follow other people’s topics and explore awesome topics.  Yes, you spend hours just reading Scoop.it.

I’ve started one Scoop.it on the topic Depth of Knowledge, Blooms’s Taxonomy, and formative assessments for researching for the school library curriculum.  Scoop.it didn’t find many articles with its search so I had to do my own searches then post the articles to the dashboard. Time-consuming since most articles don’t have a visual image and I really wanted images for the magazine format.

Quoted right from Pinterest, Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard. Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

I heard about Pinterest last summer from elementary teachers attending a summer workshop.  They showed me Pinterest boards with elementary school teacher ideas.  Last August, when I searched I just didn’t find much for high school teachers or librarians.  Well, that has changed in the past few months.  Pinterest is the hottest social bookmarking platform especially for women.  It’s like scrapbooking and shopping all rolled into one package.  You can search for topics, when you find a “pin” you can  “re-pin” to your collections.  Organizing into categories, you build “boards” into a visual websites.  Similar to Scoop.it but there is definitely a greater number of teachers connected to the Pinterest community.

I’ve posted two school library related boards:  AASL Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning 2011 and EdCampSTL Smackdown 2012.   As I worked late at night on these, my email was open in another window.  I realized that “ding” sounds I was hearing in rapid succession, were my “pins” being re-pinned and the boards being “liked” and “followed”. Talk about the power of social networking! Even today, more followers have added themselves to 30 for the AASL board and 28 for the EdcampSTL board.

Which one works best for you?  Personally, I think the Pinterest is more fun while Scoop.it does look more professional. Since I log in with my Twitter profile, guess what? Everyone connected with my Twitter shows up on the opening page with their latest “pins”.  Looks like many of us love food, fashion, and books!  Click on the Follow Me button.  If you want an invitation, I still have most of mine – at least until METC is over!