Social Software Tools: Personal Experiences

I found Social Software and Libraries to be a great learning experience. I had never blogged before and was amazed to discover how easy it was to create and maintain a blog. I really enjoyed using blogs as learning tools in this course. At first I was annoyed by having to visit all of the blogs to see if anyone had posted anything new, but then Amanda introduced us to RSS. I was very excited to discover that I only had to visit my reader to determine if anyone had posted anything new. Posting on my own site and commenting on other student’s blogs every week helped me become extremely familiar with the technology. Although I enjoyed using blogs for this class, I do not think that I will continue blogging. I just don’t feel like I have enough to write about. Sadly, my life really isn’t that exciting!

Some of the social software tools that I will continue using are: wikis, RSS and bookmarking/tagging tools. My group had a great experience using a wiki to create our collaborative presentation. I am definitely going to suggest using wiki technology for group assignments during my final term in the fall. I must say that wikis are my favourite social software tool. I also really like RSS and I am going to try and sign up for some library career job site feeds (I graduate in December—whooo hooooo!). I think that bookmarking/tagging tools like del.icio.us are great ways to remember articles and Websites; however, I was a little turned off by how many del.icio.us articles from LIS 757 were sent to my reader. I have to admit that after awhile I stopped checking them. Seeing 100+ articles became very overwhelming. I do not think that it is really necessary for students to tag every single week. Perhaps this can be tweaked the next time Amanda teaches this course.