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

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Time well-spent ...

I’m really glad we don’t have to tag this week’s post with the question number as I’m going to reflect on a few of the questions Meredith posed.

Suggestions for improving the learning activities: I have no problem saying publicly what I said on the SOTEs. I felt that this course was really well balanced with reading and exercises to help us practice using the technology. I also really appreciated Meredith’s active participation in the course. It was really nice posting something that I knew she’d actually read! I would not change a thing.

Drupal vs. Angel: I was extremely stressed out about the public nature of this platform. In fact, I was more worried about that than having to learn another new platform for school! Drupal was easy to learn to use and I found I preferred this platform because I could track threads that I participated in rather than going through pages of discussions trying to remember where I commented. I got over the public nature of the platform but I can see how many can get complacent about what they post online, forgetting that items are searchable and that they could come back to haunt you. There were moments where I forgot this was the Internet vs. a school platform and, if I was one to comment off-the-cuff, that could have proved to be a problem.

Technology for personal use: You all know this already, right? I’m addicted to Twitter (more so since I discovered TweetDeck)!!! Folks, before this class, I never would have known that the power was out at HP Pavilion yesterday morning and that “my” Sharkies didn’t have their morning skate! Not a big deal you say? Well, it sure would have been a big deal if they had cancelled or moved the game as a result of the outage and we didn’t know until we had driven 45 minutes to the Tank! And, then, thanks to Twitter, I WON A SIGNED MAGGIE STIEFVATER BOOK - and got a personal email from her!!! <LOUD fan scream & squeal> Hello … teen librarian’s dream!!

Technology for professional use: Should I be blessed and rehired by the library where I worked (please, money, fall from the sky), I would encourage management to allow us to create an internal wiki. Too much knowledge is scattered over multiple computers (and brains) in multiple branches and it would be nice to contain that info in one place that everyone can contribute too. Why, when it is time for the California Mission project, are we all doing the same search of "now where did we put that last year"? It could all be on the wiki! Also, through our group project, I really see how powerful a blog can be. I’m really excited about our prototype – and just may “steal” it for use in the future. Thanks, Erik-Karina-Marissa-Tanya, for sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm.

Overall, I was really stressing out about not having the time to take the more intensive LIBR 240, knowing that the writing of code would require more of my time and that I just didn’t have that right now – or before I graduate in May. This course ended up being a nice alternative – and a great reminder of how many incredible tools now exist that do not require a knowledge of programming language. Thank you, Meredith, for a fantastic semester!