iCyte: Social Bookmarking Website

In the article, "Teach Your Students to Share Using iCyte" David Huston looks at the many ways that iCyte can be used in the classroom. iCyte is a social bookmarking website, similar to Diigo; this means it allows for a group of people to share links by bookmarking them to the site and, in the process of doing so, include information and tags for those links. Huston remarks that the main difference between other social bookmarking sites and iCyte is that the other social aspects of similar bookmarking sites focus on finding others that share your interests, rather than just sharing with those whom you are already working with. Huston remarks in the article that it is also a free site; to some extent this has changed since this article was published (November, 2010) as you can see from the picture above. The picture below is a screenshot from the webpage where users would input their information to buy a membership:

Users are given a 30 day free trial. Once that time 

has passed, it's time to pay.

Huston considers social bookmarking on iCyte an easy way for the students to tap into their collective knowledge; by tagging the sites that they found and were sharing, the collaboration process went by very quickly. He also enjoys the fact that they did not have to be in the same room for this to happen. iCyte bookmarks can also be collected into a wiki or blog format, where others would be able to easily follow via RSS feeds or subscription. Students are also able to subscribe to other iCyte projects and view them in Google Reader and they can use iCyte as a bibliography.


In my own experience, with Diigo, I found social bookmarking sites to be overly complicated, though  this may be because of my own, pre-established, researching methods. These sites often seem to replace for the process of copy-pasting links to an email and sending it to the rest of your group. However, in order to use these sites you need to first gain a basic understanding, which is more complicated than copy-pasting, let alone email. 


All of my grumbling aside, the most useful aspect of iCyte (which I found from the video below, not the article) is that by bookmarking the site the user creates and saves a duplicate of the site that they are viewing, in case it is taken down or altered later. This can be very useful since some websites are taken down after being cited, but before being viewed by the reader. It keeps every aspect of the webpage intact, including the active links. That is pretty amazing.


iCyte also comes across as very professional, having a layout and theme that is similar to the Apple website. This is definitely not a backwater site, which I suppose their paying users can take heart in. What I don't understand is why someone would choose iCyte over Diigo when iCyte comes with a price tag? While Diigo is not as fancy or user friendly, it also doesn't cost $29.00 a year.


The use of social bookmarking sites, such as iCyte and Diigo, would cover NETS 2 and 3; using technology to research information, communicate, and collaborate. With the implementation of these sites in the classroom, students would have to learn how to research using digital tools, while also practicing interacting with their group from afar. These are important steps towards digital citizenship. 


Feel free to comment on your own experiences with social bookmarking sites! I have only used Diigo and would love to hear about other sites if you have experience with them!




For more videos from iCyte, please click here!


Huston, D. (2010, November). Teach your students to share using icyte. Learning and Leading, 38(3), 38-39. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/digital-edition-november.aspx