Wrapping it all up

Usually I am not one to put together lists, but the brain dead in me at the end of this semester has left me bereft of ideas, so here goes my list about what I thought about the course LIBR 246

1. How has your view of social software changed since starting the course?

I would say that the largest amount of change to the social software course has been what I actually included what would be in a course about social software.  I would have never thought of Delicious, or Wikipedia, or the RSS feeds as having anything to do with social software whatsoever.  I knew they were tools on the Internet but I never thought of them as social constructs.  This class has expanded my mind to what social software was and how it could be applied in unique and intriguing ways.

2. What technology did you find most interesting for your personal use? What technology did you think would be most useful professionally?
I believe that the blogging software would be something I would be likely to use in my personal life outside of the generic facebook or twitter.  It has applications as I am something of a writer and love to create and post work that I have done.  I think this gives me a forum that I can work with more personally and allow my creativity to flourish with it.  Professionally I think RSS feeds have a large ability to adapt themselves.  Of course the adaptations may be more complex and require a larger background in programming languages, but I believe information that is easily shared across many platforms has a large adaptation in the professional workplace.

3. What surprised you during the course?
I cannot say that I was exactly surprised by anything, as I have used a great deal of the social software tools before, either in my personal life or in another library science class.  What I can say is that I wouldn't have thought how all of these tools could be used or of their intrinsic benefits.  I wouldn't have thought that with something like delicious I could weave through a myriad of articles and be able to do research on a subject faster and more efficiently.

4. What suggestions do you have for improving the learning activities (exercises, assignments, blog posts, readings, examples, etc.)?
I am not sure what to add as we did a thorough amount of research across all different kinds of platforms.  While we did not really do anything integrative with MySpace or Facebook, I am not sure that is something that I would feel the need to do, as those platforms get a lot of users on them already and most people coming into the class probably already used or have used one or both of those platforms, making the activities in them unnecessary.


5. Looking back, how would you sum up your experience?
I would say that the experience broadened my horizons about ready made platforms and how the libraries can integrate themselves and market themselves with these technological tools.  I would have thought maybe a facebook page would have been enough, but now I think there are so many more possibilities and things to do in this rapidly expansive environment.  The future certainly is now.