It was great to be able to learn about so many new technologies. I feel that if I had taken another similar course I would have learned a lot about one technology, but would not have gone as in depth on each technology that I was able to in this course. It was great to interact with other students, and the blogs made that much easier. I also think it was a great way to highlight blogging features.
I was pretty nervous about creating a blog. It was something that I have never done. Mostly I was worried that I would have enough to say, but the course was laid out in a way that guided me through the posts. After 12 blogs I feel confident enough to blog on my own. Creating a blog was the first thing that intimidated me. Prior to this class I was very determined that I would never sign up for twitter. Had it not been for this class I probably would never have signed up for it. I'm glad that this class challenged me to try things that I otherwise would not have done.
I was pretty nervous about creating a blog. It was something that I have never done. Mostly I was worried that I would have enough to say, but the course was laid out in a way that guided me through the posts. After 12 blogs I feel confident enough to blog on my own. Creating a blog was the first thing that intimidated me. Prior to this class I was very determined that I would never sign up for twitter. Had it not been for this class I probably would never have signed up for it. I'm glad that this class challenged me to try things that I otherwise would not have done.
The biggest frustration that I had was the speed that we were expected to pick up the new technologies. I don't like to move on from something until I have completely finished what I was working on before. It was hard for me to keep going, even though I didn't feel that I completely understood the previous technology. One thing that I really want to do is go back and spend more time on each technology. I feel that I dislike some technologies not because I do not like how they work or what they can do, but because I have not had enough time to use them. Podcasting is one that I need to go back and explore further. I think it could have some great uses, but I really didn't like using it. Twitter is another technology that I may give another try. One of the most frustrating moments of this course for me was when I received an e-mail that my twitter account had been hacked. I was really mad at the time so I just closed my account. Maybe I will go back and try twitter out again.
Interacting with classmates through the weekly discussions and blog comments was a great way for us to communicate in a web based course, and it allowed us to exchange ideas. Lisa mentioned copyright issues a few times in her blog make it known, this was an issue that I had never really thought of. But I can see how it would be a major problem. Discussing the weekly discussion questions helped me to better understand the discussion question. Many times I found through the discussions that the problems that I was facing were also problems others in the class were also dealing with and I found this really reassuring. One thing that I looked forward to every posting was the links and websites that others would include in their blogs. It was great to see new websites that relate to the technology. One of my favourite new sites that I found was from Crystal Budgell's blog on multimedia sharing, the site she demonstrated was smilebox.
I currently am not in a position to implement any of the technologies that we learned into a library or school, but it has given me ideas for the future. I know a librarian in a small town that has been struggling with her library website for a while. She needs the website to be easy to update, but also easy to create. The web development software that she is aware of is either too expensive, too hard to figure out, or does not do what she needs it to do. I am going to suggest to her that she uses a blog as their website. It's really easy to create and update, and it's free. Right now the best thing that I can do is to continue to follow the blogs that I have started following for this class. I am hoping that by regularly following these blogs I will continue to get updated on new technology that can be applied to a library and ways that existing technologies can benefit libraries.
Overall the course taught me a lot. I have to say that my favourite technology that I learned was multimedia sharing and mashups. This was a technology that I had no previous experience with, learning about it was the highlight of this course. This is definitely the technology that I want to go back to and learn more about of all that I have learned. I think that both personally and professionally it could be a really useful technology to use.
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