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We use iKeepBookmarks in District 89 to store websites by subject. Each PC in the labs at our schools has a desktop icon to iKeepBookmarks. In just a little over a year's operation, there are over 102,000 hits for iKeepBookmarks.
Teachers love it because it has eliminated the need to type URLs and phrases for word searches. The primary grade teachers especially appreciate this. Ikeepbookmarks has allowed even the kindergartners in District 89 to easily access the Internet. Intermediate and Junior High teachers appreciate bookmarks when they want quick access to specific websites by all students. Even the eighth graders used to waste a lot of time using a search engine to find appropriate websites. Many teachers have installed the pop-up tool for bookmaking on their PCs at home. If they find a good web site they want their students to access they easily enter it at home, and it is ready for class the next day.
One of the district's favorite folders in bookmarks is called "Chicago and Illinois disasters, myths, legends, and ghost stories". Last summer, District 89 was featured in an article in the Forest Park Review because so many students who read stories from the ghost story folder in bookmarks were riding their bikes to the Forest Park cemeteries to locate burial sites they read about in iKeepBookmarks. The easy access that iKeepBookmarks gives to well selected web sites has led to increased independent reading by the students of District 89.
Dan Corcoran
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 Dan is one of four technology coordinators for Illinois School District 89. District 89 is a K-8 district covering Maywood, Melrose Park, and Broadview, Illinois. He holds an Illinois teaching certificate and teaches classes on integrating the Internet into the classroom curriculum. His background includes 6 years of teaching and 9 years of working as a self-employed computer consultant. He holds a Bachelors Degree in 6-12 Social Science Education from Saint Mary's University in Winona, Minnesota.
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