Reflections

My favorite part of the course was being able to chat with a small group about the various tools and each other’s own experiences. This really helped me to gain a better understanding of the full features of each tool. Also, generation of ideas from the individuals was great. It definitely aids in your own creation when you see and discuss how others are using something or plan to use something.

For my personal use, I found the photo sharing software to be the most interesting. It was fun to load pictures and tell my friends and relatives to go to this site to see photos, rather than getting “doubles” at the photo-shop and mailing them to Aunt Glenda. :) I also thought the photo sharing tool was interesting professionally, as I had never thought about the different ways in which it could be used. I think using Flickr as a tutorial or conducting a library tour is really neat and an exciting endeavor.

This seems silly because it is a “social” software course, but I did not really expect to interact so much with other cool librarians. Just being able to gain the contact information of librarians who are conducting pilot programs in their library or have expressed great ideas during the discussions, is so valuable!

I knew there would be some work involved, but I did not really think about it enough before starting the course. There was so much information, and as work and life happened, I was not able to cover the material in as much depth as I would have liked to. I am glad the material will be available afterwards, because I plan to review what I have learned and experiment more with the tools. Five weeks seems like a long time, but I would have more confidence in my social software ability and knowledge if we would have spent more time on each topic.

I am just so appreciative of you all creating this course and making it available for free to us – it was a super idea and very well organized! I had such a positive experience! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!