Sunday, December 2, 2007

#23 Is this really the end? Or just the beginning...

Well, true to form here I am at the last moment finishing off. I just had to dig around at home for the last 30 minutes trying to find my learning contract amongst the assorted paraphernalia that has landed on our dining table during my displacement...it revealed that my goal was "to become proficient in using the new technologies offered by the Learning 2.0 program", and the obstacles I anticipated were time (well, no surprise there!) and relocating to another branch. One that I hadn't anticipated was my 3 going on 4 year old becoming overly excited by YouTube and every time he heard a noise coming out of the speakers would fly into the room demanding to see a Thomas video! Obstacles aside here I am about to complete my "things" merely an hour until it is officially Monday!

For the most part I have really enjoyed this program, and more often than not spent much more time than I should have completing the "things" & now I know more about many of these things than my IT qualified sibling - to be fair he no longer works in the field, but go me anyway! It was great to have a little tour through all these new and exciting applications and having the best parts pointed out. Almost every one had potential for personal use and often I had to remind myself to think about how they could be used in a library environment.

My stand out favourites were LibraryThing which I will definitely be returning to later to finish cataloguing my bookshelf, Image Generators, because they were so much fun and Flickr, who can believe what some people take photos of? I really warmed up to Del.icio.us and have found myself selling the benefits of this site to my Dad. Actually, the only "thing" I never really warmed to was Rollyo - this just didn't do it for me! The one that wins hands down as far as being useful in our library service right now would have to be Zoho and I would never have known of its existence had it not been for this program.

Like I said earlier mostly I enjoyed using these sites and applications for personal reasons, but what better way to learn and then be able to pass on your knowledge and experience to others? I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this program and look forward to seeing how our library becomes part of the Library 2.0 revolution.

Thanks to GRLC, the State Library and also to Lynette & Leslie for plowing through all of our blogs! Is this the end?? No way! Lifelong learning baby! Look out!

Would you believe I just discovered how to change the colour on my posts? Good timing!