The learning journey

I have come to the end of the journey with 23 things and the thing that has surprised me the most was that it was so enjoyable! I really learned a lot and I am grateful for the opportunity to have participated. I liked Librarything.com the most. I really think the course was well presented - the only problem I had was with the audio playing up now and again. I will have to make an effort to keep using the new web tools and become proficient enough to start podcasting - that's the aim!

Online communities

I think these communities could be potentially very successful - they would enable professional people with the same interests to hold meetings ,use wikis and blogs, and to just generally interact in a purposeful way. I didn't find it difficult to join - I just realised however that my spelling left a lot to be desired on my post!

Podcasts Smodcasts!

I got caught up listening to an eclectic bunch of podcasts which I must say I enjoyed very much! I can see that they would be an excellent tool to keep up with professional developments in the Library field. I was intrigued by the sporting podcasts but the podcast I added was more of a social commentary by an American with a very broad range of interests, but there was a lot of political entries which looked very interesting. I have added it to my blog lines - hopefully I will get around to listening to some!

Watching YouTube

I found this site very interesting but I was irritated by the stops and starts of the videos (Must be a tech thing!!) I chose to have a look at the 70's commercial site as I am a sucker for nostalgia and I wanted to see if I could remember the ads in my middle age! I vaguely remembered the Harris Tea ad but the rest No ! The clothes amused me but no doubt they will come back into fashion - a sobering thought indeed!

Web 2.0 tools

I had a look at a few of the web 2.o tools but settled on the area of health and had a look at Medstory. it seemed to be very good - I picked a topic of interest and explored many sites. The only criticism is that a couple of the links I followed were dead but we all have a problem with keeping up with "live" links. The information was plentiful and varied and I could have spent hours hopping from site to site but time constraints meant I couldn't explore as much as I liked. I enjoyed this exercise - I think in a library setting some of these web tools would be useful for students to explore.

Web Based Applications

I could really see the value of these - I played with both Zoho writer, had a look at the chat and meeting and wiki options of Zoho. I think the Wikis option looked good and I liked the fact it means that dread of remembering to drag your USB bar around is a thing of the past. I think the ease of use of some of these web based applications are also appealing as we still see in the Library a great diversity in skill level in what some of our clients can and can't do. I actually think these would be handy in actually showing some clients the ease of using new technology. I was impressed!

The wild world of WIKI'S

I think wikis would be great in the library setting - I really liked the electronic resources wikis that had an alphabetical resource list that had a brief explanation of resources and contained links to further wikis and other information sources. In terms of having an interactive resource that all library clients could access it has great potential. It may be that library patrons can help create the library of the future, meaning the library is a place of currency and relevance.