LIBR 246-04/13 Web 2.0 (Fall 2010)

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Before starting this class, I was full of trepidation. I’m not particularly techy and am usually something of a late adopter when it comes to new technologies. And when I read the details for our first week, where we had to sign up for a news aggregator and create an account with delicious, my fears that I was out of my depth were confirmed. ‘Oh no’ I thought ‘I’m going to be way behind everyone and needing to ask my husband for help all the time!’ But then I actually did both of those tasks (by myself!) and, would you believe it, they were not difficult at all! And, even more than that, I showed my husband, our household’s Guru for All Things Involving a Computer, how to set them up for himself. And after that boost of confidence, I found everything else pretty straightforward – even recording a screencast, which I dreaded until I did it.

So what I’ve found is that all these social software tools are really easy to use and, heavens above, actually designed to be used by those who don’t think of themselves as techy. So my view of social software has changed from thinking it’s something only for the hardcore to the view that it can be used by everyone.

For my personal use I will continue to use my Google Reader as I can’t imagine how I managed without it. I’ve got all sorts of blogs set up on there now and have such easy access to them: so it has actually allowed me to be both more efficient with my time and also to look at more content. Least useful is Twitter, which I find unsatisfactory and irritating – never say never though, so I’ll keep my account going. Professionally, all three libraries I work at are pretty slow at adopting new technologies, but I’m excited to be working on a children’s book blog for one of them – so blogging will, at least initially, be the most useful for me.

I think what surprises me, and overwhelms me a little, is how much great information is out there that I can now access quickly and easily. Just trawling through my Google Reader this morning after a couple of days off took me best part of an hour to even skim all the good stuff. I was also surprised at how well some libraries are using social software in a way that is integral to their ‘brand’ – beacons of hope for us all - and I liked the way the class focused on these real-world examples not just the tools themselves.

My learning experience with this class was pretty great. I’m definitely a hands-on learner so the exercises were a lot of fun as well as being useful. I liked that the group project brings a lot of our learning together in a sort of real world situation. I enjoyed the readings and looking at all the examples – obviously it’s important to keep those up-to-date. I liked the mix of assignments and have found them all to be relevant as well as appealing: it’s great to be able to write about something that is immediately useful as well as of personal interest. So no real suggestions for improvement except, perhaps, more hands on exercises. I remember the question of mobile apps was raised and while I think this would be worthwhile covering this, many students do not have smartphones so it would be hard to have a ‘doing’ element.

I was initially a little skeptical about Drupal – and I still miss the ‘being able to see everything on one page’ part of an Angel discussion board. But once I got used to it – particularly using tags to see all the posts on one topic – I appreciated its flexibility. I liked the informality of blog posts rather than discussion board posts – so much more readable! - and am already dreading going back to more scholarly language next semester. I thought most people got into the swing of it pretty quickly. I also liked the ‘preview’ feature for the quick skim before plunging in. I felt I learnt a lot from all my classmates and got to know them much better than I would on Angel. Initially, I found the practicality of putting up a post a bit tricky but I found a way pretty quickly, though, in all honesty, I’m still not sure I do it in the most efficient way.

Overall I learnt not to be afraid of social software, but to treat it like anything else: it is a set of tools with which to meet either personal or organizational goals. I think if I can communicate that to my colleagues, and share my enthusiasm about how easy these tools are to use, this will have been a very worthwhile semester!

Thanks very much, Meredith!