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

1. How has your view of social software changed since starting the course?

I was always pretty negative about social software. I was really turned off by Friendster and MySpace because I found it annoying that people my age (about 38 – 40 at that time) were so concerned with how many friends they had and their greatest friend etc. Then moving on to Facebook I wondered why those same friends seemed so concerned with telling everyone what they were up to when. I have learned that social software is much much more than social networking. Web 2.0 goes way beyond telling someone you just go a slice of pizza.

2. What technology did you find most interesting for your personal use?

What technology did you think would be most useful professionally? I think screen casting, I am dying to find a good easy to use free software to make some screen casts for my blog (I blog about YA materials mostly books. Unfortunately I have not updated in a month gasp, good thing no one reads it but me). I used the free trail of Adobe Captivate for my screen cast assignment. Captivate is just a little too pricy to purchase even at the student rate.

Since I have no professional life to speak of I cannot say which technology I am more likely to use. It looks like I will be volunteering this summer at SFPL and apparently the idea is for me and my friend to work on the teen blog page; how ironic is that?

3. What surprised you during the course?

How much I enjoyed it. As I have stated many times I could care less about social networking in my personal life. It was good to learn how much more this so called Web 2.0 stuff is. I have really come to appreciate how much information people share on their blogs. I also (in case I have not said it enough) like the whole collaborative aspect of Web 2.0.

4. What suggestions do you have for improving the learning activities (exercises, assignments, blog posts, readings, examples, etc.)?

I do not really have any, though maybe a heads up as to the fact that the screencasting assignment could take up a bit of time. I am not sure about anyone else but I spent at least 2X more time on that project than I thought I would.

5. How did your experience using Drupal differ from your experience in Angel classrooms (or classes using other traditional course management systems)?

Drupal rocks, if every teacher used Drupal the program would be 1000X better. First and foremost I felt like I actually had an idea of who my classmates where. Second the blog format was a lot easy to track than the pain of Angel. Also the class material was organized really well, though that might be more Meredith than Drupal. I find the countless folders in folders that relate to weekly assignments in Angel a huge drag. It is much easier to pin point readings and assignments in Drupal.

6. Looking back, how would you sum up your experience?

Excellent, I really appreciated the hands on element to this class. Now that I have posted to Wikipedia I want to go back and tidy up the Young Adult page (with all my free time). Having to write a “real” paper added a nice balance to the other work we did in this class. I also really liked the fact that we had several topics to write about each week. This made reading other students blog posts a lot more interesting. Let’s face it there are only so many ways we can each write about the same topic. Not to be too gushing but this was one of the best classes I have taken; this is my last full semester so that is saying something. I have recommended this class to a couple of people who share my former attitude about what I thought was Web 2.0.