Several Thinkfinity trainers conducting Thinkfinity professional development sessions have tipped me off to a trick that lots of people are using to find terrific resources: they check to see what their friends have bookmarked, and select the bookmark icon to save them for themselves!

Here's one anecdote:

"I observed a group of California school teachers using the community  to save resources that they were going to use the first month of  school. There was one teacher who was finding resources quicker than his  grade level team members to use with his 5th graders. The other 5th  grade teachers were so excited to see that they could just find the  teacher’s profile from within the Community and “steal” all his cool  favorite resources and add them to their favorite list.  It saved the  other teachers tons of time.

The “fast clicker”  didn’t seem to mind that they were “stealing” all his stuff because he  was the “techie” guy in the group and his group members would have come  to him anyways asking for ideas.  This also saved the “fast clicker”  time because he didn’t have to help each of them individually. The  helpful teacher also tagged his stuff with the school name so teachers  in the school could search that way to find his resources."

—by tammy0214

Here's how:

1. Friend someone you know

2. Click their username to see their Profile

3. Select the tab "[Name]'s Stuff"

4. Select the tab "Favorite Resources"

5. The best part: all you have to do to save a resource as your own favorite is click the bookmark icon to the right of the title.

(The bookmark icon looks like this; it's red when you have bookmarked it, grey when you have not.)

Happy bookmarking!

Christine

Community Manager

You can bookmark websites directly within the community or install the "Add to Thinkfinity" button to your browser to make bookmarking easy all the time.

Top Tips:

• Before creating a new bookmark, Search the Community (at the top right of the site) to see if it's already been created. If so, simply select it to add to your favorites.
• When creating a new bookmark, create a descriptive title and use tags so that other can find it when they search.
• Go to Browse All > Favorite Resources to discover top favorites of the week, month, and year.
• When bookmarking a personal page, mark it as private.

To bookmark within the community:

• Select the Create New tab in the yellow toolbar.
• Select Favorite Resources.
• Enter the URL and click Next.
• Enter a descriptive title, notes, and tags, and choose Save.
• Note: If you would like the bookmark to be private from the community, make sure to check Make this Favorite Resource Private.

To bookmark using the "Add to Thinkfinity" button:

• Select the Create New tab in the yellow toolbar.
• Select Favorite Resources.
• Select the Install the button link in the blue box near the top of the page. This will create a link in your browser.
• Now you can add bookmarks whenever you find a great site—just click on the link in your browser.

Look for more helpful tips on using the community.

Christine

Verizon Thinkfinity Community Manager