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

From Will Manley -- WILL UNWOUND #117: “Would you hire someone with an M.L.S. from Laptop U?” by Will Manley

From me -- Rethinking Online Learning

Enjoy!

Wow! I can't even believe that the class is nearly over! I just finished grading your group projects (let me know if you didn't get an email from me with your grade and comments) and now all that's left are the final course reflections. Your enthusiasm in the class was truly inspiring to me and your reflections helped me to see many of these tools and ideas in new ways. I love how in this class we all get to be teachers and learners, so you're not just learning from one person, but from 23 other people (plus all the authors and bloggers we read!).

I just wanted to let everyone know that I'll be out-of-town at a conference in Buffalo today (Thursday) until Saturday afternoon. I'm not sure what my internet connectivity situation will be there, but at least I should be able to check my email on my phone and respond to any urgent issues.

Great job last night, everyone! I was really pleased with all of the presentations -- very polished, clear and concise.

The SOTES (Survey of Teaching Effectiveness) is available now! For those who don't know, this is a survey that examines your satisfaction with the class and my teaching.

I wanted to let everyone know that I finished grading all of the Community Dynamics papers. You should either have received an email from me with an attachment or your comments and grade will be in a Google Doc. Let me know if you have any difficulty locating your grade. I was very pleased on the whole with the papers this semester. The topics you chose were fascinating and you all found some really interesting research studies to support your ideas.

If you have any questions about your paper, please email me.

This is a reminder to email me your Group Experience Report after you've completed your group project. This is a part of the grade for the final project and it's critical that I receive one from each of you. To refresh your memory:

It's hard to believe, but your Final Project presentations are fast approaching! Each group will be presenting on the social software tool or tools you'd like to implement in your setting this coming Wednesday at 6pm PST. Remember that you're pretending that we're staff and administrators at your library and you're trying to sell us on your idea. Presentations should be no longer than 7 minutes and we'll take questions for a few minutes after each while the next group gets set up.

The content of this post is taken from a blog post I wrote back in July 2009. about some of the concerns I had with libraries' reliance on certain cloud computing companies. I thought you might find this content interesting this week in light of the focus on planning for the successful implementation of social software tools.

I just wanted to make sure that you all saw our Elluminate Assistant, Richard Santos' message in the forums about getting help with Elluminate and preparing for your group presentations. This information will be very useful as you work on your final projects.