This week was both interesting and frustrating. Our first discussion board asked us to add our classmates to our Facebook and PBWorks accounts and also to critique our classmates accounts. The interesting part was viewing each others' accounts. Everyone's account had a different "flavor". Some classmates added videos, some had links to blogs or websites, and some included apps to their Facebook accounts. The wikis that were created ranged from very in-depth to just basic construction. One very interesting trend was the number of lessons on the use of technology. The frustrating part was in trying to figure out how to add our classmates to our groups. Actually, creating the group in Facebook was quite challenging since I kept running into the problem of having to add members when creating the group. Once it was explained that I could add myself as a member, I was off and running. Being a somewhat private person, I found the idea of adding my classmates to my private Facebook account very unappealing. So, I created a new account with a slight variation to my name and used a different email account. This worked well.
Our second discussion board dealt with the idea of whether the use of technology is "re-wiring" our brains. I do believe that there is some validity to this, but mostly I think it's a combination of what is now socially acceptable and the fact that this technology is becoming an acceptable and preferred way of learning. This does concern me a bit as an older student. I think that the ability to collaborate with people of mutual interests from all over the globe is fascinating! I just don't think there's been quite enough research done to state outright that our brains are being re-wired. I am interested to see what new research is done in the coming years.
Our third discussion board dealt with creating an account in Delicious - a social bookmarking tool. I'd heard of Delicious before this, but didn't really see the pratical usage. That's because I wasn't looking at it as a way to collaborate with others. As I have read more and actually created my account, I am seeing that this may end up being quite useful to me in a personal and professional way. I certainly have seen that this is something the library where I work could connect with our patrons by creating a full "library" of bookmarks on a variety of subjects. It is almost mind-boggling to think about the possibilities!
We had two assignments this week. One was to write a letter of intent to our boss, department head, etc. to ask for permission to use a social networking site in our jobs or classrooms. I think this may really come in handy to me as I try to get our library "on board" with using Facebook for mini-training sessions for our staff. In researching the topic, I found quite a few journal articles that discuss the topic of social networking and libraries.
Our second assignment for the week was to answer the critical thinking questions from chapter 6 of our text book. This chapter deals with micro-blogging, like Twitter. I still am not convinced that Tweeting is something that I'm going to find practical, but there were several applications in the text book that I plan to explore. Who knows, I may end up to become an avid tweeter in the end?
This week was pretty labor-intensive. I found it quite difficult to keep up because a dear old friend passed away suddenly after a 2 week fight with cancer. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, life has a way of throwing you curves that are unexpected.
Until next week....Happy Learning
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