LIS 757

Sorry for the late post, everyone, but I’ve just gotten back from somewhere that I wasn’t particularly pleased to be.

Overall, this course has been a wonderful and rewarding learning experience.  I had not taken a distance course before and I was a little skeptical about using blogging as a learning tool.   However, I have come to really appreciate blogs for their educational value as well as the fact that this course is offered as a distance option.  The distance format of this course makes a lot of sense especially with exploring the online tools through the class blog.  I liked that we covered a wide range of social software tools, but it would have been nice to spend more time

I apologize that in all the craziness that was the last two weeks, I didn’t realize I forgot to declare a blog holiday last week (though I plan on touching on some of that material anyway). It’s hard to believe this is the end of class. I’ve really enjoyed this class and learning with all of you.

I can’t believe the term is just about over and this is my final blog post! (I apologize for not posting a blog holiday last week!)

I’ve had a very rewarding semester in this class. Prior to this, I've heard much talk about social software and whether there was a place for it in libraries - and sadly the commens have mostly have been negative. So it was good to find out about these tools myself, review some case studies (some good, some bad and some well… in between :-), and experiment with using a few of them. I am now able to make informed contributions to discussions on topic. As for my personal experiences, well I can certainly vouch for tagging online content.

Blogs provide relatively good communication forums and assist structuring academic classes (especially distance ed!).  I am not a frequent writer or consumer of blogs related to personal interests, but my experiences in this class have convinced me of the usefulness of this tool for learning purposes.  However, if there are too many authors (students), than this tool can be difficult to stay current with.

With the semester coming to an end I began to think about what I have accomplished and learned over the past few months.  When I began this course I was a bit intimidated by the vast amount of online software that I knew nothing about and the terminology I had never heard before.  But, now, after all is said and done, I can’t believe that I have a Google Reader, a blog, a Second Life Avatar and a Flickr account!  My how far we’ve come!

 Wikis, Blogs, RSS and Link Rolls are now apart of my vernacular – compliments of LIS 757. Fourteen weeks have passed and I must say, I have a heighten sense of understanding of Web 2.0 technology.