Reflections on Five Weeks

All,

 Just wanted to say first off how much I've enjoyed sharing the past five weeks with everyone and how beneficial this course has been.  I'm excited!  Now to answer the questions: 

What were your favorite experiences in the course?

For me, the group chats were great.  We shared so much useful information with each other and just the support we were able to provide to each other was very beneficial.  It's simply nice to know that our situation and the obstacles we face in implementing social software are not unique.  I did also enjoy the live presentations.  For the most part, they were not only extremely informative, but also provided great examples of social software use and were entertaining!

What technology did you find most interesting for your personal use? What technology did you think would be most useful professionally?

For personal use, I liked the social bookmarking and products such as del.icio.us.  Professionally, I think that wikis and rss feeds will be of the greatest use to my library.

Were there any unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

Our library has talked about social software, but pretty much pooh-poohed it as not being relevant to academic libraries, but a "public library" tool, except for a couple of persistent supporters.  However, none of us had been able to carve out enough time to fully investigate any of the available technologies.  Honestly, I was of the dubious set, thinking that we might find something of limited use to our staff and maybe faculty, so I was surprised at the wide variety of uses of social software in academic libraries.  I was also surprised that I could envision the implementation of more than just rss feeds for our library.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I would extend the program to more than five weeks, because I felt that, although I devoted a LOT of time to the course, that I didn't have enough time to fully digest the information and experiment with the technologies.  It might be beneficial to separate academic and public libraries, as well, offering two different courses so that we can each concentrate on the experiences, presentations, and information which are most relevant to us.  Finally, a one-on-one consultation with a moderator prior to writing a proposal could be of benefit, but I realize that it probably isn't feasible given the number of participants and the time constraints of the moderators.

If there is anything else you'd like to tell us about your experiences in this course, please feel free to do so.

Again, I'd just like to say that you guys are AWESOME!  Thank you so much to the moderators, presenters, and all the contributors, for being willing to invest your time, skills, and knowledge into assisting us. 

Now, I'm off to form my working group and write up my project plan to implement our library's new wiki.