Final Reflection!

The essence of this course's value is that it basically forces us into the cutting edge of librarianship today. We learn how to use tools that many of us are unfamiliar with (and possibly have never even heard of before!) and more importantly we learn the value of these tools in today's classroom. We also learn how to use them responsibly so that we can try to avoid issues with copyright infringement. These are some of the most important things we can learn during our whole time at grad school, because without these skills school librarians may soon be viewed as irrelevant (and if that happens, the students will be the ones hurt the most).

Before the course I considered myself fairly well versed in web tools. This course definitely brought my knowledge to a whole new level. My comfort level with new web 2.0 tools has sky rocketed and I cannot wait to play around with several of the tools again! (Note to self, try Glogster out as soon as possible.) I also had no idea that web copyrights even existed, so this course may have actually averted a copyright crisis! I will always try to check for the license first and if something's in question I will email the person/company who controlls the information (provided that I can find an email address or another way to contact them, naturally). I really enjoyed the hands-on nature of the course, it really helped solidify the use of many of these tools. I only wish I had a more positive experience with the web presentation (right now I'm pretty frustrated with them in general). I'll have to explore some of the more postively received presenter tools on my own time so that this frustration doesn't stick for too long.

I definitely plan on keeping a blog...although for now it'll probably focus on my knitting projects. Once I'm working in a library I'll probably start a separate blog discussing topics relating to that. I know I'm going to use Google Sites again, I'm already constantly updating the one I made for my LIS 511. On that same vein, I plan on using Wix and Glogster again because I love the idea of customizing your website in such an interesting way, they'll help make my library and project sites much more engaging. I also loved all the Google Search tools and other Google tools (such as Documents) and I will definitely be using them in the classroom often. I'm going to show a bunch of them to my mother (also a school librarian) so she can implement them in her high school.

I haven't really gotten into the whole social bookmarking thing, I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it up. I have a feeling that it's mostly because we were introduced to so many new things that I just didn't have enough time to play around with it. Right now it just seems pretty cluttered. Maybe I'm just using too many tags for one website. Also I'm not sure how much I'll use the Nings or how many other blogs I'm going to read, but I'm sure I'll get most of the main entries from them because I already use twitter and many of the librarians who use them use twitter to announce their posts.