Zootool: A Visual Social Bookmarking Tool

Oct. 23 was a sad day for me because my favorite bookmarking tool, SimplyBox, closed to the public.  I liked SimplyBox because of it's ease of use, organization and functionality.  But, most of all, I liked that it was visual.  You could collect screen shots of the sites you wanted to bookmark.  So instead of just seeing the name of the site, you would also see the screenshot.  SimplyBox was such a excellent tool, that I wasn't surprised with their decision to focus on Enterprise and close to the public.

So, that sent me on my quest to find another visual bookmarking tool that also had the ease of use, organization and functionality that I wanted.  I came across several candidates in my search, but Zootool was by far the best for meeting my criteria.  When you save a bookmark in Zootool, it takes a screenshot of the website.  You can organize your bookmarks into categories, which Zootool refers to as Packs.  You can also organize your bookmarks with tags.  The only real drawback I've found with Zootool is that the application doesn't allow you share an entire Pack.  You can only share a single bookmark or Profile Page link, which gives someone access to your entire collection of bookmarks. 

You can share your bookmarks and follow other users with Zootool .  If you find a Zootool user you want to follow, you can follow them through the application and/or through RSS.  The RSS option for following a user is located at the bottom of the users Profile Page.  You can find my Zootool Profile Page here if you'd like to follow my bookmarks.  You can follow and add your comments to my bookmarks.

Zootool also offers an iPhone app.  I put the app on my iPad too!  There was a small fee for the iPhone app, but it's well worth it! The Zootool app ranks very high among my favorite apps.

Another feature of Note is that you can place bookmarks into multiple Packs.  The iPad app allows you to select multiple Packs at the time of bookmarking.  If you're bookmarking on a desktop or laptop, you can select one Pack at the time of bookmarking.  Once the site is bookmarked, you can simply drag it into as many Packs as you want.

The New Delicious

Today Richard Byrne posted about the new Delicious launch on his Free Technology for Teachers Blog. Delicious is a popular social bookmarking site. They've just relaunched with a new feature called Delicious Stacks. With the new stacks feature, you can group your content based on tags.  The video below gives an overview of the new Delicious Stacks feature.  

This new feature has many possible classroom uses.  You and your students can create groups of websites based on specific math topics.  For example, you could create a stack of websites that pertain to adding fractions.  Or, you could have your students search the web for sites, videos, and images that relate to adding fractions.  Then have students create a Stack of the multimedia they collected and share it with classmates.   If your students create their own videos, images or other online projects, they can tag their work and save on Delicious.  This could serve as a digital portfolio.  This would allow students to easily share their work with classmates, parents, etc.

If you haven't already began to use Social Bookmarking sites like Delicious, you should really consider using one.  They make it so easy to save and share content. 

A couple of other excellent bookmarking options are:

• LiveBinders

• Diigo