Final Reflections - Awesome!
I have always been fascinated by social software tools, but I had used them mostly for my personal use. This class helped me to start thinking about ways these tools can be used at my library. I learned that though I can be adverse to learning new technology sometimes, most of these tools were very easy to use and implement. I am excited about finding creative ways to implement some of them in my library.
For personal use, I really enjoy writing blogs and social networking on Facebook (consider being my Facebook friend!). I am not sure how this will play out in the future, and if anyone else is interested, I was thinking that I would enjoy writing for some kind of group blog. I haven’t really fully thought about what this would look like, but I have seriously enjoyed the engaging discussions we have had in our class on drupal. Also, I was really proud of my idea for the librarian jobs pipe I made. I will probably be revamping it slightly, but using it for my future job search.
Professionally, I think screencasting definitely has some potential as we start to think about how to better serve our distance education students. I was also surprised at how well my podcast turned out about the Rockwell painting that our library owns, and I will consider maybe doing a few more about other artifacts that we display at our library.
I think each tool needs to be considered in the context of how it will be used, so I’m not sure how well my podcasting idea would work at other libraries.
Drupal. Okay, I now have this hatred for Blackboard as a result of our drupal use, which has been awesome to use. There are still a few weird things in it, like the time stamps are not always accurate on my machine, but otherwise, I like it much better than Blackboard. Also, I would have liked a comment RSS feed if that’s possible. In the last few months, Blackboard was upgraded to become more “functional” only now I feel like it is clunkier and slower. I actually had some avoidance issues going on with my class on Blackboard this semester.
If any of the Blackboard people read this… it would be awesome if somehow RSS could be incorporated into our discussion boards. There’s probably some privacy issues that have to do with why this can’t happen, but maybe there’s a way to do this with passwords or something similar to subscription journal RSS feeds in Academic Search Premiere for example.
This class is in my top three favorites list. I’m not surprised at this considering that this class was very well-organized and thought out in the first place. Meredith, I think your experience working in the library with distance education students has probably informed the way you organized this class, and you did an excellent job for your first attempt at a grad level class.
It was easy to find the information about assignments, due dates, expectations, and I loved that I could embed the class calendar in my google calendar account. I liked that you gave us several ideas or options for our blog posts, and those made for some great discussions. Thank you also for spacing out the paper and the group project. This was very helpful and made it so that I did not feel overwhelmed with the amount of work I needed to do in the span of a few weeks.
For improvements, I would echo my classmates that varying the blog commenting due date would have been helpful, for example have posts due by Tuesday, and comments due by Wednesday or Thursday, so that everyone has a chance to read and comment on all the posts. Some of us liked to turn things in closer to that Tuesday midnight deadline than others. ;)
Also, the Elluminate sessions were great! I normally do not like having to be locked down at my computer for class (this is why I’m an online student—I like the asynchronicity) but the speakers were great! One suggestion if you would like us to interact more with the person who is being interviewed…provide us with their bio, resources, etc. before the session, so that we have time to look over that material and possibly develop some questions before the session. We do not know as much about these people as you do, and I think we were quiet in Elluminate sessions because we were all thinking about what the person said. It takes me longer to process things, so I always have questions two days later. Given time to prepare, I would be more apt to ask a question in a live session.
This was probably the most engaging class I’ve taken because we were required to interact with each other every week. It is also the only class where it sounds like we (in the class) do want to try and meet each other (hope to see you guys at
In conclusion, I think I’m going to miss this class, but I kind of see it as the beginning of our journey in networking, participating in the professional library community, and continuing to learn from each other. I would be interested in hearing back from Meredith as she continues to teach whether this class was unique in the level of engagement and dialogue that we achieved, or whether she continues to inspire excellence in all her students.
