• What were your favorite experiences in the course?

Webcasts, screencasts, participant blogs and proposals, group chats, activities, and readings – all of it!

• What technology did you find most interesting for your personal use? What technology did you think would be most useful professionally?

Probably the only one of these technologies that I will use for personal reasons is flickr – where I can post photos to share with friends who live far away.  For professional work, I think the wiki will be most useful to me – for collaborating with colleagues.

• Were there any unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I am surprised at how often I use delicious.  I am not bookmarking myself, but find it useful to review what others have bookmarked.  In general, I think popular tagging is very effective. 

During the week when we covered these topics, I had the opportunity to meet with a number of librarians at a Montana Library Association meeting where these actual topics were under discussion.  So  I am a little late in my posting on RSS/Social Bookmarking/Tagging , but I've had some time to think about them and try them out, too.

 I think RSS is a natural for librarians.  We are already helping our patrons in many ways to negotiate the vast and ever-expanding information landscape on the Web.  Putting links to selected RSS feeds on the library website is another smart way to deliver librarian-evaluated content to patrons, it's a valuable service.

As a trainer, I found Lauren Pressley's presentation about using flickr for training very interesting.  In my experience, most people prefer visual learning.  Flickr seems like a fast and easy way to provide visuals to go with text-based training materials, and can be accessed anywhere.  I might use flickr in this way, but in my division, we are considering going straight to screencasts, which provide the kind of multi-media experience we think might be very effective for our users/learners. 

 I was very impressed with the GMT wiki handbook - now there's an application!

I missed last week's webcast on wikis, so my group leader suggested that I view the archived presentation and post a comment to about it to my blog (to meet course requirements!)  So here it is:

 I think the pairing of these two presentations is excellent.  Chad Boeninger's presentation about wikis at Ohio University using the examples from Bizwiki, along with his general information and guidelines for best practices, is an effective segue into Starr Hoffman's step-by-step setup of a wiki on pbwiki.  The dual presentation made me consider again how important it is to think before diving in:  to have a mutual understanding of the purpose of the wiki among participating team members, to start out with a structure, and to have a commitment by members to participate regularly.

In my division at the Montana State Library, there are 7 people, 4 of them based at the home office in Helena, Montana, and the other three (including me) based in different locations around the state, hundreds of miles away from each other.  Wow, can we use a wiki!  We have other ways of collaborating on our projects, like teleconferencing and desktop sharing using online meeting software.  These two latter methods of collaboration are good for immediate brainstorming and problem-solving, but a wiki provides an ongoing record and workspace for members of the team, and especially for new members or to inform others who may be interested in our work, like our client libraries.

Wow, what a lot of information about blogs this week!

First, let me say that I'm a rather private sort of person, so I am not inclined to post a weblog of personal stuff.  But I can really appreciate the value of blogging for my organization, both as a way to post current information to the public and to collaborate with my colleagues within the organization.

Blogging software, especially if the service is free, is a great way for libraries, and especially small public libraries with no money, to get a presence on the Web.  You don't have to know html - don't have to invest in WYSIWYG web editor software (and learn how to use it) - and don't need to pay for a web hosting service (although it would be good to have a domain name).  It's definately a good place to start, and we have seen some fabulous examples of what libraries are doing with blogs.

I'm Lauren, and I work as a trainer for the Montana State Library.  I got my MLS from the University of North Texas in August 2006, through the distance ed program.  There were two on-site institutes in Las Vegas and the rest of the program was completed online.  So I learned how to use a lot of technology, though it didn't include all the social software we will be using in this course.  I've had a little experience with blogs, wikis and RSS. In my current position, I do training on many kinds of technology for public librarians throughout Montana.  After taking this course, I hope to be able to share some exciting new ideas for using social software in Montana libraries.