Zootool - free visual bookmarking service - fun and useful

Zootool is a free, fun and easy to use, visual bookmarking service I found out about from my PLN on Twitter this past week.

Zootool allows you to bookmark, organize, and share your favorite web links, images, videos and documents easily. You simply install the browser extension (Firefox, Chrome, and Safari) and then start bookmarking. You organize your bookmarks in "stacks" and can add tags for easy organization and searching later. Your bookmarks are visual on in your Zootool page. You can also share your bookmarks via email, Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. There is also an iPhone app and a mobile optimized version for Android.

You can even import bookmarks from Delicious, Pinboard, Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox or many other services and browsers. Videos, bookmarks, images and documents can all be viewed in your Zootool collection.

This is a great tool for educators and students to use. They can bookmark resources for projects and for class and then share with others easily. It's another great resource for collecting and sharing online resources.

Related:

Send Your Bookmarks to Evernote using Booknote Importer (Mac)

Symbaloo - visual bookmarking - organize and share

Google for Education Resources (including bookmarking and bookmarklets)

Social Bookmarking Resources

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a way of bookmarking your favorite web sites and sharing them with other people. You can even make notes and annotate your bookmarks. It's a great tool for education, allowing teachers to share web sites with their students very easily. Teachers can add notes, or even questions, to the bookmark to make it an assignment or explain the content better. 

There are three main tools I've used for sharing bookmarks: delicious, Diigo, and Google Bookmarks. All three have various features that make them useful. However, word has just spread this week that delicious is closing up shop. Here's some more info:

Delicious, the social bookmarking service that is widely used (including in schools) is closing. This news has quickly spread to throughout the internet and while there is a push for Yahoo (who owns Delicious) to keep it open, many people are offering up solutions for people who will be losing their bookmarks.

Diigo, another social bookmarking service, has the ability for you to import your Delicious bookmarks into Diigo. See article below on how to do this.

Diigo is a really powerful tool, with groups you can follow, browser extensions to make it easier to share sites you bookmark, and even annotation tools. With it, you can easily annotate and share bookmarks with your colleagues or students. Students can set up an account and share with others also. You can even search in groups and find other educators and see what bookmarks they are posting.

Google Bookmarks is a free service from Google that allows you to keep your bookmarks in their system so that you can access them from anywhere. You can sort and tag them by subject and even share them with others. I use Google bookmarks the most, but share bookmarks with Diigo.



Here are some great articles on Delicious, Diigo, and Social Bookmarking:

Cool Cat Teacher - great article on social bookmarking

Delicious is Closing...how to import your bookmarks into Diigo in 5 minutes.