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The end.

Submitted by grace.v on Sat, 12/06/2008 - 1:01am
Before this course, I thought social software was mostly for recreational purposes.  I only used it to keep in touch with family and friends through social networking sites, chatting, blogging, etc.  After the course, I was able to really see and understand its great potential to make not only my personal life better but my professional life too.  RSS feed aggregators, wikis, mash-ups, podcasting, etc. have always been familiar because people talked about it a lot.  However, I never really got to explore and learn about it until this course.  Now that I know more about its capabilities, I am a bigger fan of social software.  I seriously see it as professional tool as much as I see it as a recreational tool.

I think RSS aggregators is the most interesting and helpful technology for my personal and professional use.  I found myself using RSS aggregators to keep up with the newest trends in my profession, current events, technology news and even family blogs.  It definitely made me more aware and in-the-know.  I used to be amazed by how some people always broadcast the latest technology and latest news through email before I hear even about it in the mainstream media.  Now, I know where they're getting their information from and why they're getting it super fast!  Some people read newspapers in the morning, now I check my feeds—it's a new addiction.  I am also fascinated by social bookmarks and love to check out the top things people are reading or the top websites people are viewing each day.  In addition to RSS aggregators, I think wikis are very useful tools for librarianship.  I see it as an ongoing, searchable and collaborative giant notebook—a great asset for research.  These are my top favs but I know that screencasting, podcasting and vodcasting are amazing tools as well.  These will be very useful at work too!

 
I was very surprised about how much I learned in this class.  I discovered so many new and helpful technologies from not only the course materials but from my classmate's weekly blogs about resources outside of class work.  In a way, I am a little bit disappointed that I won't have anything new to learn from all of you each week.  I was also surprised that I was able to do all these technical assignments.  As Ethel mentioned in her wrap up blog, Exercise 2 was very challenging.  I almost gave up and scrambled to find a way to get a hold of Meredith to tell her that I am so confused!  I was so worried that I can't do the assignment which is why when I completed it, I felt a great sense of personal accomplishment.  As the course went on, I found that I continued to feel this way every time I completed a class exercise/assignment.  Doing my homework for this class became more than wanting to get a good grade or passing the class, it truly became a personal challenge to become a better, knowledgeable and technologically-savvy future librarian.  This class has given me the confidence that I can probably do other technical projects in the future if I really tried (and have a good instructor/mentor!).  
 
Another thing I liked in this course is Drupal.  I like how it is never down, never freezes and never takes forever for a page to load (never happened to me this semester, at least!).  I also also thought it was kind of cool to see who's online at the same time I'm online.  It makes me feel less alone "in the classroom."  It's just too bad we can't chat with each other--then again, that might be a good thing.  We'd be more focused on doing our homework than chatting with each other.  By the way, I really loved all the guest speakers from our lectures.  They were so interesting and engaging.  If I were to suggest anything for improving our learning activities, it would be to invite more guest speakers.  It was really cool to learn from different librarians who are pioneers in web 2.0.  Maybe a library director or a decision maker can be invited to be interviewed by students so we can pick their brains on what their needs are and how they can be convinced about using social software in a real library setting.  I'm not sure how people would respond to using web cams in lectures, but I thought it would be a cool idea to try using Stickam.com or another service to meet everyone face-to-face at least once in the semester.  Overall, I really enjoyed this class, learned a lot and truly feel that I got my money's worth this semester! Cool
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