Out of my comfort zone...
By yvonnereed - Posted on May 6th, 2008
Although I embrace learning new things and enjoy new experiences, I was definitely out of my comfort zone in the beginning of this class. At first I was very uncomfortable with using Drupal. The good old blackboard seemed so right, so comfy and so familiar. But now I see Drupal as different and even better way to engage with the instructor and other students especially since our focus is social networking. Now, having to go back to blackboard just seems wrong. One of the biggest benefits of Drupal was the RSS feeds. Furthermore, the overall appearance of Drupal is much more visually appealing.
Many of us are excited about what social networking software can do for us in the libraries. I saw this enthusiasm particularly from my classmates in this course but few of us have the time to really hash out the “what ifs” and “whatnots”. During this course I really was able to gain knowledge from everyone about thoughts that have been tried, what has worked, what hasn’t, unique ways to incorporate some of these tools and some best practices. What I can take away from this course is ideas from a collective group that have been well thought out and have some value to those who work in libraries.
My views on social networking have not changed since I’ve always been interested in how we can use these tools but my view have definitely been broadened to include even more possibilities.
Facebook, Myspace and virtual realms like second life, I believe are still largely for the use of individuals. I know that libraries and other organizations have presence on these but as an individual my drive to access these websites is not to find out what’s happening in libraries but to connect with friends and families and the occasional librarian. Wikis seemed to be probably the most useful in professional organizations because of the way everyone can contribute and because of the way information can be accessed and organized. Also, wikis for the most part are created for the purpose of collecting and sharing knowledge.
I think what surprised me most about this class was the flexibility in learning. While we went through tons of information in such a small amount of time, it didn’t seemed rushed, the lectures were readily available to listen to at our leisure and we had plenty of time and support to learn some new tools. Once you got used to Drupal is was very easy to follow posts, exercises, assignments, etc. I not sure if there is room for improvement. One learning feature that I really enjoyed was the guest speakers. Their experience and examples brought an element to this class that I found very informative and beneficial.
To sum up my experience of this class, I can say that I would take another class in this format and I would recommend it to others. I was definitely “out of my comfort zone” for many an assignment but it was in a “good way” otherwise I probably would not have gained as much practical experience as I did.
yvonnereed's blog
• Login to post comments
