LIBR 246-11 Web 2.0 (Summer 2011)

It is inevitable that things change.  It can be good or bad.  My change throughout this course has been positive.  I expanded my realm of knowledge.  I experienced new tools and concepts.  Some of the useful concepts I will take away are creating a personal brand, the importance of monitoring an online reputation, elements needed for a successful social media presence, the importance of building an online community with ideas on how to maintain and grow the community.

2. I think the resource that I felt was the most useful for me in this class was simply having the opportunity to experiment with technologies that I hear about every day, but had never used. Prior to this class, I was a regular user of Facebook but that was about it. I enjoyed playing around with Delicious, which I will likely continue to use on a regular basis, and Twitter. While I am glad that I have become more familiar with Twitter to see what all the fuss was about – I don’t think that it is something I will use personally once the class is over.

I’ve been thinking about this question and if I had been asked previous to this class, I’m not sure that I would have been able to answer.  For about five years, I’ve had a Facebook account, but haven’t really utilized it.  Now  I can clearly see how I can use i

What resources (blogs, tools, etc.) have you found the most useful in this class that you will continue to use/follow?

My Twitter account was hacked.  Sorry to all those who got the bogus direct message.

Don't open the link.  It goes back to a Twitter log-on page.  I think it's much more sinister than that.

Martin

"“Keeping up with technology” seems overwhelming and huge and ridiculously hard if it’s presented as a monolith that must be scaled. Keeping up doesn’t mean knowing every single tech trend that’s out there. It means being engaged with your community and knowing what your patrons are using" (Sheehan, 2010).

"If you don’t feel like you’re keeping up, pick an area of technology you’re interested in (ebooks is a good place to start) and go learn more about it." (Sheehan, 2010).

I have learned a lot from this class. I think the most important thing that has changed is my attitude towards social media in general. I am still not on facebook, and I have no plans to join under a personal account, but I now understand much more how these various social media can be used as tools for libraries. I do not feel so afraid to go out there and explore--in fact, I think it’s exciting to constantly find new and often free tools with which to try out new ways of interaction and collaboration.

Keeping up to date with all the happenings in library land. That is a challenge. In fact one of the things I want to do next term is decide where I want to focus my interest in library studies. Once I do that I can fine tune the blogs I keep track of, and the books I read. It will be hard to find a focus because I find everything interesting and exciting, but I know from experience that it isn’t possible to keep on top of everything.
For the moment I will continue to follow: